We encourage Montanans who have yet to update their contact information to do so to ensure they receive vital communications from DPHHS related to their health care coverage,” Ebelt said. We entered this process with a plan, and we continue to implement it. “DPHHS continues to move this process forward in a timely and efficient manner. Most states were not in compliance with federal requirements in the leadup to the unwinding process, Brooks added, a fact she said “illustrates how far we have to go for states to remove administrative hurdles and embrace technology” to help eligible people stay enrolled in Medicaid and improve state efficiencies.Īsked what the Montana health department had learned about redeterminations since the process began, Ebelt was nonspecific. And by targeted outreach, I mean personalized and direct (not mass mailings or robot calls),” Brooks said in an email Monday.
“Everyone is surprised or disappointed about the large share of procedural disenrollments, hence several states pausing or taking advantage of rolling over an extra 30 days for targeted outreach. Tricia Brooks, a researcher at Georgetown University Center for Children and Families, said the trend has prompted some states to amend their process and extend the outreach period for people who did not complete the required steps. Researchers at Kaiser Family Foundation, a national health policy nonprofit, found that an average of 74% of people who lost coverage did because of procedural reasons, such as incomplete or unreturned paperwork. Nationwide, more than 3 million people have been disenrolled from Medicaid since states began what the redetermination process commonly referred to as “Medicaid unwinding.” The rates of removal from Medicaid vary widely between states, all of which have unique policies and procedures when handling eligibility reviews. “There are a number of reasons why individuals may choose to not return their redetermination packet or additional requested information, and DPHHS has no way of knowing what those reasons are in each case, so making comparisons month to month does not provide valuable insight,” Ebelt said. Asked for specific reasons for closure, health department spokesman Jon Ebelt said the agency would publish cumulative figures “not month by month, as the redetermination process can span multiple months depending on when requested information is returned.”Īsked why the overall figure for information-related closures went down, Ebelt said the department is not conducting month-to-month comparisons.
The department did not provide a breakout of that information in its May summary. Another 20% had been deemed ineligible because of a change in income, household size or other qualifying factors. In the first month of redeterminations, the department said 72% of people whose coverage ended had failed to return the required information. Of that group, 47% lost coverage, a figure nearly identical to those in the May cohort. Those percentages are similar to the department’s reported outcomes for the 31,596 individuals considered in April. Twenty-eight percent of those people in the May group - 11,171 - had their coverage renewed, while the cases of another 9,919 enrollees were still being processed, a quarter of the month’s caseload. Nearly half of the 40,334 people up for consideration that month lost coverage, representing about 6% of the state’s overall Medicaid population. The state health department, which is releasing updated figures on the redetermination process roughly once a month, published the summary of May data on Friday. Montana health officials ended Medicaid health insurance coverage for 19,244 people in May, bringing the total number of people removed from the public health program up to 34,204 since the state began reevaluating enrollee eligibility in April - an administrative power it did not have during the federally designated pandemic emergency. Whoops! There was an error and we couldn't process your subscription.
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