Inside Health Policy

By: Dorothy Mills-Gregg

CMS needs to release guidance before the end of the public health emergency on how states should restart the Medicaid redetermination process, Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program Payment and Access Commission members said, as they fear states might be too anxious to remove beneficiaries and overwhelm the system…. Commissioner Tricia Brooks said she knows some states are still processing renewals but can’t disenroll the Medicaid beneficiaries they deem ineligible. If states opt to drop those beneficiaries all at once as soon as the public health emergency is ended, Brooks is concerned state call centers could be overwhelmed by those losing coverage.“There’s got to be a some way to re-phase these back in because if states try to do this in one fell swoop they’re going to end up overwhelming their eligibility workers and then consumers aren’t going to be able to reach someone to get the assistance they need to understand what they need to do to prove that they remain eligible,” Brooks said.

…

Read more here