The problem had to do with failure to fill out the necessary paperwork in order to be eligible.
Nearly 55,300 kids throughout Idaho have lost their health insurance coverage through Medicaid since April, due to the disenrollment process currently going on in the state.
Idaho has been working to end the protections that kept coverage in place throughout the pandemic.
According to data that includes figures up until the end of July 2023, over 33,111 of the total 55,300 kids who lost their coverage were a part of a group called Medicaid Protection. It was decided to remove that group from the program either because they were no longer eligible or because they failed to respond to requests from the state in order to determine their eligibility. The disenrollment data for kids in Idaho was provided by Idaho Voices of Children, which was obtained from the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare through a request for public records access.
The main reason kids from the Medicaid Protection group lost their coverage was due to a lack of response to the requests the state made for information. Approximately 22,978 children from Idaho were disenrolled for failing to reply. Another 10,133 were disenrolled after having been confirmed as ineligible for continuing in the program, said the data.
Failure to respond was also the top reason adults lost their Medicaid health insurance coverage.
“Many working parents with low incomes only have Medicaid as an affordable health coverage option for their children. Seeing this many children lose their health coverage is shocking and should concern everyone in the state who cares about the health of children,” said Hillarie Hagen, an analyst from Idaho Voices for Children.
Across the United States, the number of kids who have lost their Medicaid health insurance coverage totals in the hundreds of thousands. It isn’t evident why around 22,00 kids were removed from Medicaid on top of the state’s efforts to reevaluate who is eligible among those on Idaho Medicaid Protection after having been flagged as unlikely to continue with the program.
About 32 percent of Medicaid health insurance disenrollments in the United States were kids, according to data from the 12 states that reported disenrollment based on age, said a report from the Kaiser Family Foundation.
