Nearly 73,000 Lose Medicaid Coverage in Arkansas as Pandemic Relief Expires

The flags of the U.S. and Arkansas fly in front of the state capitol in Little Rock, Ark., on Dec. 1, 2022. Janice Hisle/The Epoch Times

Nearly 73,000 Arkansans lost Medicaid coverage in April as pandemic-relief programs wind down nationwide.

About 15 million people could lose Medicaid coverage around the country over the next year, as states start to determine eligibility for assistance after a provision under the 2020 federal COVID-19 public health emergency law expires in May.

At least 93 million low-income Americans are covered by Medicaid at this time.

Congress terminated the restriction that barred states from removing most individuals on Medicaid for three years which had been stipulated in the $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill passed in December.

This allowed states to remove those who are typically unqualified from their Medicaid rolls on April 1.

As the law expired, the federal government gave states 14 months to make sure everyone in the program is eligible.

Arkansas quickly began its Medicaid eligibility-review process following the end of the federal public health emergency to remove normally ineligible beneficiaries from the program.

The state legislature passed a law in 2021 requiring the state’s Department of Human Services (DHS) to complete the process in six months, about twice as quickly as most states.

Recipients will now be reviewed under normal eligibility rules, which have been set by Congress and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

States Cull Medicaid Rolls as Pandemic Emergency Declared Over

Most states’ timelines to clean up the Medicaid rolls vary, with the majority planning to use the most of the 14 months allowed to complete the effort, according to a survey of state Medicaid agencies conducted in January by KFF and Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families.

Five states—Arkansas, Montana, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, and South Dakota—are planning to finish in the review with the next nine months.

Arkansas struck off more than 44,000 names from its Medicaid program at the end of April, after their coverage had been extended during the pandemic, reported the state’s Medicaid office on May 8. The majority of those removed from the rolls were booted over paperwork issues.

This included 44,714 people who failed to return the renewal form, and 7,673 who did not return requested information, while the DHS was unable to locate another 2,024, which is about 75 percent of the total.

Another 28,135 cases were closed as part of normal operations, bringing the total number of removals for April to 72,802.

This compares to approximately 25,000 who were removed each month during 2018–19, prior to the pandemic.

Out of all of the cases reviewed in April, 61,236 Arkansans had their coverage renewed, after they were confirmed eligible under normal rules, leaving the state with 1.06 million people enrolled in Medicaid.

Meanwhile, a significant number those affected by the Medicaid cuts in April were children, or 29,000 individuals, approximately 40 percent of those losing coverage.

About 23,837 of the children were enrolled as ARKids A beneficiaries, with 1,863 as ARKids B recipients and 17,256 of those culled were beneficiaries of the public health emergency extension.

Critics Complain Arkansas Is Moving Too Fast to Cut Beneficiaries

Critics have complained that Arkansas was moving too fast and not doing enough to ensure that beneficiaries got the support to navigate the paperwork in time to stay on the rolls.

“That is pretty high,” said Jennifer Tolbert, associate director at the Kaiser Family Foundation’s (KFF) program on Medicaid and the uninsured, adding, “the one note of caution in all of this is that this is the first month.”

“This is the only set of data. While it does raise red flags, we don’t know how this will play out,” she said.

Joan Alker, executive director of the Center for Children and Families, said that number of children removed from Medicaid was “very big” and disproportionate.

She then called on Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders to “...PAUSE Medicaid terminations at least for children (preferably adults too) to assess what’s going wrong,” in a tweet.

The concern over the loss of Medicaid benefits for millions of Americans have spread to other states across the country.

“Millions of beneficiaries are expected to be disenrolled over the next year, including some who are no longer eligible for Medicaid and others who still qualify, but lose coverage due to administrative paperwork problems,” reported KFF, on April 4.

“Among the just over one-third of states able to report, they estimate that about 18 percent of Medicaid enrollees will be disenrolled when the continuous enrollment provision ends. However, the estimates range widely across reporting states from about 7 percent to 33 percent of total enrollees.”

“This estimated average disenrollment rate is slightly higher than the 13 percent reported by states in 2022, although it is consistent with other estimates indicating about 15–18 million people may lose Medicaid coverage over the coming year,” it concluded.

Governor Defends State’s Position

Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that Arkansas would not see a spike in the number of uninsured people, and that those who lose Medicaid coverage can still get health insurance through their jobs or through the healthcare marketplace.

“Misleading headlines are claiming that our state is cutting Medicaid coverage. That isn’t true. Like every other state, we’re simply removing ineligible participants from the program to reserve resources for those who need them and follow the law,” Sanders wrote in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal on May 1.

“Some Democrats and activist reporters oppose Arkansas’s actions because they want to keep people dependent on the government, even though that reduces the Medicaid resources for low-income and disabled people,” she continued.

However, Tolbert warned that the high percentage of people disenrolled for procedural reasons in Arkansas is still a red flag.

She cited a separate report that Arkansas submitted to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which were slightly different from the state’s report on May 8.

Tolbert said that at least 90 percent were removed for not providing enough information to determine their eligibility or because the state was unable to locate them, which was far greater than the official numbers.

“It is somewhat concerning,” she said, adding, “but again, this process is happening quickly, and we don’t know how many times the state reached out and how much time they allowed for people to respond.”

“When you are trying to complete a process in six months, that suggests that there is not time to reach out and allow time to respond.”