State officials: 20k Ohioans enroll in Medicaid through new site in first 6 weeks

More than 20,000 Ohioans have enrolled in Medicaid since the state’s new online applications system was launched Dec. 9, state officials said this week (Source: “20,000 enroll in Medicaid; sign-up glitches linger,” Columbus Dispatch, Jan. 25, 2014).

Between Dec. 9 and Jan. 24, a total of 54,420 applications were received through the benefits.ohio.gov website, with 20,338 applications approved, 3,900 applications denied and the remaining 30,000 applications still pending, according to state officials.

Nearly 2.4 million Ohioans now have Medicaid coverage. State officials project that about 500,000 of Ohio’s 1.5 million uninsured will sign up for the program in the next 18 months — 275,000 newly eligible and 231,000 who have been qualified but weren’t signed up and are expected to enroll now because of the mandate.

Officials can’t say how many of the 20,000 new enrollees qualified through expansion and how many were already eligible, but they hope to have a breakdown by mid-February.

As of Jan. 22, 90,000 Ohioans who are eligible for Medicaid had submitted applications through the federal website. The federal government began calling them in late December to urge them to re-apply through the state website, but it’s not known how many have.