Health & Lifestyle

Some 2.2 million poor kids have lost health insurance as Covid-era safeguards lapse, often due to missing paperwork, amid winter ‘tripledemic’

At least 2.2 million children from poor families have lost health insurance since Covid-19-era safeguards lapsed, often due to missing paperwork and clerical errors, stoking fears about Gen Alpha’s health.

Researchers at KFF, a health nonprofit, and the Georgetown Center for Children and Families (CCF), say more than five million adults and kids have been kicked off Medicaid — and more disenrollments are in the pipeline.

Joan Alker, CCF’s executive director, said such states as Florida and Texas had been busily booting families off Medicaid, but that her numbers were a big ‘underestimate’ as datasets were still being brought together.

‘States are not done yet!’ Alker wrote on CCF’s blog.

The post-pandemic process of disenrolling people from Medicaid is called 'unwinding'

The post-pandemic process of disenrolling people from Medicaid is called ‘unwinding’

Some families have been put off from taking their uninsured, poorly children to see  a medic

Some families have been put off from taking their uninsured, poorly children to see  a medic

‘We’re only about one-third of the way through the process.’

The purging of state Medicaid rolls is one of the starkest welfare cuts America has seen in decades.

Many of the youngsters still qualified for aid, but lost it due to clerical errors and missing paperwork.

The timing is especially worrying. 

Health chiefs warn of a ‘tripledemic’ this winter of Covid, flu and RSV — a respiratory virus that has landed fast-growing numbers of American youngsters in hospital.

It’s not yet clear how many of the uninsured children have managed to find alternative health coverage in the seven months since state officials began cutting their rolls.

For many hard-up families, adding kids to costly employer-based healthcare schemes is out of the question, said Alker.

‘There are many reasons to be worried that a significant proportion of the two million children are experiencing gaps in coverage,’ she wrote.

Millions of children went on Medicaid amid mass layoffs at the start of the pandemic.

Some joined another program, called CHIP, for those cannot afford private coverage but are too wealthy for Medicaid.

The government program to insure low-income children and adults expanded during pandemic-era layoffs

The government program to insure low-income children and adults expanded during pandemic-era layoffs 

Texas, California, and Florida have been the most aggressive at kicking off recipients

Texas, California, and Florida have been the most aggressive at kicking off recipients

Both schemes are jointly funded by the states and the federal government.

As the pandemic waned, an ‘unwinding’ process was supposed to see many children moved from Medicaid to CHIP.

But that hasn’t worked as expected, and the process could soon leave as many as three million children — or more — losing coverage.

Families across the US have had to cover out-of-pocket drug costs upwards of $1,000 per month because children were kicked off rolls.

Some cash-strapped parents have been put off taking an uninsured, poorly child to a doctor.

Some officials have defended the unwinding, saying Medicaid programs are reverting to their intended shape and scope after swelling during Covid-19.

Many people lose their coverage due to clerical errors and missing paperwor

Many people lose their coverage due to clerical errors and missing paperwor

Low-income families across the US have been hit.

Among them is Arlett Mireles, a Texas mom with five children aged three to 10, who filled out the correct forms to renew their Medicaid coverage.

She received a letter saying her children’s Medicaid benefits were good through Oct. 31, she told the Austin American-Statesman.

But after taking her youngsters to five appointments in September and making one emergency room visit, she learned from a provider that the coverage had expired in August.

‘Without coverage, they will not be able to go,’ Mireles said of the specialists her children see routinely.

‘I’ve always had Medicaid, except two years of CHIP, but most of the time Medicaid.’

She says she was left wary about a medical emergency that she would struggle to afford.


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