Mississippi Today

Medicaid continues removing thousands from rolls

Published

12 months ago

November 10, 2023

Staff Editor

Medicaid continues removing thousands from rolls

Another 8,674 Mississippians lost their Medicaid coverage in the agency’s latest round of disenrollments in October.

Since unwinding disenrollments began in June, Mississippi Medicaid has removed more than 90,000 people from its rolls.

State Medicaid divisions started reviewing their rolls for the first time in three years this spring, when federal regulations that prevented them from disenrolling beneficiaries during the pandemic ended. Now, millions of Medicaid beneficiaries are losing their coverage in a process called “unwinding.”

In Mississippi, Medicaid dropped 29,460 people in June; 22,507 people in July; 16,659 people in August and 12,828 people in September.

More than half of the people dropped thus far in Mississippi have been children. Since June, almost 55,000 kids have been disenrolled by Medicaid, according to the agency’s monthly enrollment reports.

Kids are most at risk of losing benefits during unwinding, according to federal research.

The new numbers also reflect a continuing trend: Most of those people were not dropped because they were found to be ineligible. They were dropped because of issues with their paperwork – called “procedural disenrollments.”

Of the 8,674 people dropped in October, around 71% were procedural disenrollments. Mississippi reports an overall 76.5% procedural disenrollment rate thus far.

According to KFF, 71% of all people disenrolled were terminated for procedural reasons across all states with available data as of Nov. 8. This is problematic, according to experts, because many of those people dropped for procedural reasons could still be eligible for Medicaid coverage.

The numbers of people being dropped are steadily decreasing each month because fewer people are due for review and the agency’s backlog is growing.

Since July, the agency has been due to review a decreasing number of beneficiaries — from 75,110 to 70,069 in August, to 68,592 in September and 57,118 in October.

But the backlog has generally increased, except for this past month — 15,574 reviews went uncompleted in July, to 18,008 in August, to 24,215 in September to 18,041 in October.

The agency finally made a small dent this past month in its backlogs and decreased its number of uncompleted reviews by 3,058.

Mississippi Medicaid reached its highest enrollment in the agency’s history — more than 900,000 beneficiaries — the month before unwinding disenrollments began. Before the terminations began, children in low-income families made up more than half of the state‘s Medicaid rolls.

Now, after October’s disenrollments, the agency covers 823,416 Mississippians, about 49% of whom are kids.

In the coming months, thousands more Mississippians will lose their Medicaid coverage during a statewide health care crisis. One report puts nearly half of the state’s rural hospitals at risk of closure, facing financial struggles caused in large part by uncompensated care, which is money hospitals lose providing care to people who are uninsured.

As of Nov. 8, at least 10,135,000 Medicaid beneficiaries have been disenrolled nationally, according to KFF. The organization predicts up to 24 million people could lose coverage during unwinding.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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Mississippi Today

On this day in 1750

Published

2 hours ago

November 4, 2024

Staff Editor

mississippitoday.org – Jerry Mitchell – 2024-11-04 07:00:00

Nov. 4, 1750

A painting of Jean Baptiste Point DuSable by Thomas Blackshear II. Credit: National Postal Museum

Jean Baptiste Point DuSable, the “Father of Chicago,” was born.

A man of African descent, he became the first known settler in the area that became the city of Chicago. He married a Potawatomi woman, Kitiwaha (Catherine), and they had two children.

According to records, the property included a log cabin with two barns, a horse-drawn mill, a bakehouse, a poultry house, a dairy, a smokehouse, a fenced garden and an orchard. At his trading post, DuSable served Native Americans, British and French explorers and spoke a number of languages.

“He was actually arrested by the British for being thought of as an American Patriot sympathizer,” Julius Jones, curator at the Chicago History Museum told WLS, but DuSable beat those charges.

In Chicago today, a school, street, museum, harbor, park and bridge bear his name. The place where he settled near the mouth of the Chicago River is now a National Historic Landmark, part of the city’s Pioneer Court.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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Mississippi Today

Podcast: Mississippi’s top election official discusses Tuesday’s election

Published

5 hours ago

November 4, 2024

Staff Editor

mississippitoday.org – Geoff Pender, Bobby Harrison and Taylor Vance – 2024-11-04 06:30:00

Secretary of State Michael Watson talks with Mississippi Today’s Geoff Pender, Bobby Harrison and Taylor Vance ahead of Tuesday’s election. He urges voters to remember sacrifices many have made to protect Americans’ voting rights and get to the polls, and he weighs in on whether a recent court ruling on absentee vote counting will impact this year’s elections.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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Mississippi Today

Insurance chief willing to sue feds if Gov. Reeves doesn’t support state health exchange

Published

7 hours ago

November 4, 2024

Staff Editor

mississippitoday.org – Taylor Vance – 2024-11-04 04:00:00

State Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney is willing to sue the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services if it does not allow Mississippi to create a state-based health insurance exchange because of Republican Gov. Tate Reeves’ potential opposition.

Federal officials, who must approve of a state implementing its own health insurance exchange, want a letter of approval from a state’s governor before they allow a state to implement the program, according to Chaney.

“I don’t know what the governor’s going to do,” Chaney told Mississippi Today. “I think he’ll probably wait until after the election to make a decision. But I’m willing to sue CMS if that’s what it takes.”

The five-term commissioner, a Republican, said his requests to Reeves, also a Republican, to discuss the policy have gone unanswered. The governor’s office did not respond to a request to comment on this story.

Earlier this year, the Legislature passed a law authorizing Chaney’s agency to create a Mississippi-based exchange to replace the federal exchange that currently is used by Mississippians to obtain health insurance. The bill became law without the governor’s signature.

States that operate their own exchanges can typically attract more companies to write health insurance policies and offer people policies at lower costs, and it would likely save the state millions of dollars in payments to the federal government.

Chaney also said he’s been consulting with former Republican Gov. Haley Barbour, who also supported some version of a state-based exchange while in office, about implementing a state-based program.

Currently, 21 states plus the District of Columbia have state-based exchanges, though three still operate from the federal platform. Should he follow through and sue the federal government, Chaney said he would use outside counsel and several other states told him they would join the lawsuit.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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