In a new op-ed for MedPage Today, Paul Shafer and I explain how the end of the public health emergency (PHE) and Medicaid continuous enrollment condition (CEC) will lead to significant coverage loss, specifically among people who are still eligible for coverage. When regular Medicaid redeterminations resume after the end of the PHE, if people don’t update their contact information or respond to state notices within a certain amount of time, they’ll be at risk of losing their coverage, despite still being eligible. The effect of the end of the CEC won’t be felt equally across populations. People of color and those who aren’t a part of the Modified Adjusted Gross Income (MAGI) Medicaid population are more at risk of falling through the cracks because of these onerous requirements.
As we write,
If you dig into the [August report from HHS], you will see that the disenrollment cliff will likely be a disaster for health equity — as if the inequities of the pandemic itself weren’t enough. A majority of those projected to lose coverage are non-white and/or Latinx, making up . . . 61% [of] those losing coverage because of administrative burdens . . . This represents a disproportionate burden of coverage loss, when still eligible, among those already bearing inequitable burdens of the pandemic and systemic racism more generally.
Read the full piece here.
Research for this piece was supported by Arnold Ventures.
