March 31 set for end of Medicaid continuous enrollment, regardless of emergency status

Signing up for Medicaid correctly will once again become an important step for enrollees after a three-year break from paperwork hurdles (Source: “6.8 million expected to lose Medicaid when paperwork hurdles return,” NPR Shots, Jan. 24).

In 2020, the federal government recognized that a pandemic would be a bad time for people to lose access to medical care, so it required states to keep people on Medicaid as long as the country was in a public health emergency. The pandemic continues and so has the public health emergency, most recently renewed on Jan. 11.

But continuous enrollment will end on March 31, no matter what. It was part of the budget bill Congress passed in December 2022. Even if the public health emergency is renewed, states will begin to make people on Medicaid sign up again to renew their coverage. And that means between 5 million and 14 million Americans could lose their Medicaid coverage, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

The federal Department of Health and Human Services expects 6.8 million people to lose their coverage even though they are still eligible, based on historical trends looking at paperwork and other administrative hurdles.

In the three pandemic years, the number of Americans on Medicaid and CHIP – the Children's Health Insurance Program – swelled to 90.9 million, an increase of almost 20 million.