KFF Medicaid Enrollment and Unwinding Tracker: July 12, 2023

The Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) has published an update to its Medicaid Enrollment and Unwinding Tracker, including the most recent data on Medicaid enrollment, renewals, disenrollments, and other key indicators reported by states during the unwinding.

State Medicaid Disenrollment Data
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• At least 1,979,000 Medicaid enrollees have been disenrolled as of July 12, 2023, based on the most current data from 29 states and the District of Columbia. Overall, 36% of people with a completed renewal were disenrolled in reporting states while 64%, or 3.2 million enrollees, had their coverage renewed (four of the reporting states do not provide data on renewed enrollees). Because not all states have publicly available data on total disenrollments, the data reported here undercount the actual number of disenrollments.

• There is wide variation in disenrollment rates across reporting states, ranging from 76% in Idaho to 10% in Michigan. For Idaho, the disenrollment rate is among only those enrollees whose coverage was maintained during the pandemic and who the state believes are no longer eligible, which may explain, in part, the higher disenrollment rate. Differences in who states are targeting with early renewals as well as differences in renewal policies and systems capacity likely explain some of the variation in disenrollment rates. Some states (such as Idaho and South Carolina) are initially targeting people early in the unwinding period that they think are no longer eligible or who did not respond to renewal requests during the pandemic, but other states are conducting renewals based on an individual’s renewal date. Additionally, some states have adopted several policies that promote continued coverage among those who remain eligible and have automated eligibility systems that can more easily and accurately process renewals while other states have adopted fewer of these policies and have more manually-driven systems.

• Across all states with available data, 73% of all people disenrolled had their coverage terminated for procedural reasons. There is also wide variation in rates of procedural disenrollments across states reporting this breakout, ranging from 93% in South Carolina to 30% in Iowa. Procedural disenrollments are cases where people are disenrolled because they did not complete the renewal process and can occur when the state has outdated contact information or because the enrollee does not understand or otherwise does not complete renewal packets within a specific timeframe. High procedural disenrollment rates are concerning because many people who are disenrolled for these paperwork reasons may still be eligible for Medicaid coverage.

• Although data are limited, children accounted for roughly one-third (33%) of Medicaid disenrollments in six states reporting age breakouts. As of July 12, 2023, at least 293,000 children had been disenrolled out of 712,000 total disenrollments in the six states. The share of children disenrolled ranged from 37% in Arkansas to 20% in Washington.