Nearly 23K Michiganders have lost Medicaid, another 123,000 remain at risk

• Now that the pandemic is over, Medicaid recipients must once again prove their eligibility for coverage
• The process requires recipients to return paperwork to the state, which many of them aren’t aware of 
• Among those who received notice in June and July, 70,0000 returned paperwork, and 225K were ‘passively enrolled’ 

As the state of Michigan continues to trim back its Medicaid numbers, 123,744 people stand to lose coverage by the end of the month if they don’t respond to the state’s request for paperwork.

Those are the latest numbers from the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, which is reviewing qualifications of more than 3 million people now in Healthy Michigan or other Medicaid plans — assessing their qualifications over twelve months. By May, 2024, qualifications for all Medicaid beneficiaries will have been reviewed.

Nearly 23,000 Michganders already have lost coverage, a portion of the more than 4 million Americans who have been disenrolled, according to the health care research organization, KFF. That’s based on data from 42 states and the District of Columbia.

Related:

• Michigan’s Medicaid ballooned during COVID. It’s about to be pared back.
• More than 100K Michiganders may lose Medicaid by end of month
• Thousands on Michigan Medicaid will keep coverage for at least another month

The head of the state’s Medicaid program, Meghan Groen, said she and others are “feeling really good” about their outreach efforts. But just how the numbers stack up to expectations is difficult to say, because the unprecedented growth in Medicaid during COVID — both in Michigan and across the nation — is just now being pared back under a federal mandate to reassess eligibility of the beneficiaries.

“This is something we’ve never done before at this scale,” Groen told Bridge Michigan on Thursday. 

Michigan uses a 90-day renewal timeline, meaning that the process for each beneficiary begins two months before an enrollee's renewal date and ends at the close of the enrollee's renewal month. 

In its first two months of a year-long process known as “redetermination,” the state has tried to reach 471,573 beneficiaries, according to the state health department.

Precise numbers change daily. According to preliminary data provided to Bridge Thursday:

• Plans have been renewed for 224,757 people, representing the first two months in the 12-month renewal process.
• Of those whose coverage has been renewed, the state was able to automatically re-enroll 154,423  because of documentation on file that indicated their income eligibility — paperwork, for example, for cash assistance for needy families. 
• Just more than 70,000 Michiganders have been re-enrolled after submitting paperwork.
• 22,911 people have lost coverage — that is, they are no longer eligible because of increased income, for example.

Michigan received a reprieve from the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services this summer, when CMS allowed states to use other documentation to determine beneficiaries’ eligibility and gave the states another month to find beneficiaries. CMS also is allowing private insurers to do outreach as well, Groen noted. 

Still, she acknowledged the difficulty in tracking down beneficiaries and their paperwork.

“There will be a lot of people disenrolled if they don’t get their packets back,” she said.

The state last month unveiled a dashboard, which will be updated every month, so the public can track its efforts.