600,000 Americans lose their Medicaid coverage, Florida leads

WASHINGTON – More than 600,000 people in the U.S. have lost their Medicaid coverage since the end of the public health emergency.

Late last year, Congress reached a bipartisan agreement to end continuous coverage requirements.

This opened the door for a massive elimination of the life-saving health program.

In Florida alone, 250,000 people were cut from Medicaid, even as Governor Ron DeSantis is running for president.

A dozen states have released preliminary data on the number of people excluded from Medicaid.

According to a KFF Health News analysis, “the vast majority were removed from state rolls for not completing paperwork” rather than confirmed ineligibility.

As Jonathan Cohn of the HuffPost reports, Florida’s governor has refused to support the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion.

“That’s the fourth-highest rate in the country,” Cohn noted.

In Florida, a four-person household must have an annual income of less than $39,900 to qualify for Medicaid.

This is the main reason more than 12% of Floridians do not have health insurance.

The Congressional Budget Office recently estimated that around 15.5 million people—including 5 million children—are likely to lose Medicaid coverage nationwide over the next year and a half as states resume eligibility checks made necessary by a system that doesn’t guarantee healthcare to all as a right.

“Many people don’t realize that they’ve been disenrolled from Medicaid until they show up at the pharmacy to get their prescription refilled or they have a doctor’s appointment scheduled,” Jennifer Tolbert, director of state health reform at the Kaiser Family Foundation, told The Washington Post last week.