Millions of Americans Are Being Kicked Off Medicaid for No Reason

Now that Joe Biden and Congress have ended COVID-19 protections, millions of people are being kicked off Medicaid for procedural reasons like failing to respond to mail quickly. Many more are set to lose their health care coverage.

President Joe Biden speaks at the White House in Washington DC, on June 22, 2023. (Celal Gunes / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)


As states have begun clearing out their Medicaid rolls for the first time since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, nearly three quarters of the Americans who’ve lost coverage have been terminated not because they’re ineligible for the low-income health insurance program, but due to administrative reasons, such as failing to quickly respond to a piece of mail.

In February, President Joe Biden bragged in his State of the Union speech that “more Americans have health insurance now than ever in history.” Biden made that comment six weeks after he set the stage to massively increase the United States’ uninsured population, when he signed legislation from Congress ending the pandemic-era requirement that states maintain Medicaid beneficiaries’ coverage in exchange for extra federal funding.

The measure, passed as part of a year-end spending bill, allowed states to begin mass disenrollments starting in April — a policy decision that is naturally a boon for government contractors that states pay to identify beneficiaries they could potentially remove from the program.

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