Kansas discontinues Medicaid coverage for 40% of recipients
Kansas has discontinued Medicaid coverage for about 40% of Kansans up for renewal as the nationwide “unwinding” effort nears its completion next year.
The KanCare Clearinghouse has renewed coverage for 191,321 people and discontinued coverage for 48,039.
The state has discontinued coverage for another 79,439 recipients because they either hadn’t filed a renewal application or had more information to file. Of those, 35,868 people are in the reinstatement window, meaning they can still submit their renewal applications and get their coverage backdated to the day they were discontinued if the clearinghouse approves them.
Kansas’ disenrollment rate ranks 16th in the nation, according to an update last week from the Kaiser Family Foundation.
But both Kansas officials and the foundation have pointed to differences that make state-to-state comparisons difficult.
The differences include whether a state has expanded Medicaid coverage (Kansas is one of 10 that hasn’t), when the discontinuations started (some states began as late as July 1), and how the discontinuations are handled (some states targeted people early that they thought were no longer eligible or didn’t respond to renewal requests during the pandemic).
As a result, disenrollment rates across various states range from 62% in Texas to 10% in Maine.
Congress initially approved continuous Medicaid enrollment at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020. At the end of last year, Congress approved ending continuous enrollment on March 31.
The federal government gave every state a 12-month deadline to return to normal eligibility and enrollment operations in what’s known as the “unwinding” process.
More than 94 million people were enrolled in the Medicaid/Children's Health Insurance Program at the beginning of the unwinding process, an increase of more than 22 million from February 2020.
