Some 500,000 fewer Georgia residents are enrolled in public health care since the expiration of pandemic-era coverage protections.
Net Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) enrollment in Georgia has fallen from over 2.5 million to under 2 million in the 19 months between March 2023 and October 2024, according to health policy-focused nonprofit KFF.
Why It Matters
Georgia’s 21 percent drop in enrollment surpasses the national average of 16 percent. Additionally, its disenrollment rate—representing the percentage of individuals who were removed but couldn’t renew their coverage—stands at 45 percent, well above the national average of 31 percent. This raises concerns about why a higher proportion of state residents lost their coverage after the end of pandemic-era protections.
What To Know
Over half a million Georgians have lost coverage due to the national “disenrollment” or “unwinding” process that began in March 2023.
From early 2020 until this point, a provision in the Families First Coronavirus Response Act ensured “continuous enrollment” for Medicaid and CHIP recipients, preventing states from conducting coverage redeterminations during the pandemic.
This pause in redeterminations saw the number of those enrolled in both programs in Georgia increase from 1.8 million to 2.5 million, a 37 percent jump.
Following the expiration of continuous enrollment, surveys by KFF revealed that many individuals across the country had a limited understanding of the implications of the unwinding process and were unsure what actions they had to take to retain coverage.
KFF also found that a significant portion of individuals were kicked off coverage for “procedural reasons,” including instances where enrollees did not receive renewal notices and delays in processing eligibility documentation, leading to terminations even though the individuals may have been eligible.
KFF reports that Georgia had a high rate of procedural disenrollment, with 74 percent of those removed for the reasons mentioned above. Only 26 percent were disenrolled because of a determination of ineligibility.
Georgia was also one of nine states to receive a letter from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in late 2023, raising concerns about the high number of children being disenrolled.
What People Are Saying
Leah Chan, director of Health Justice at the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute, in a December 2023 statement: “Ensuring access to comprehensive health coverage is not just a policy goal; it is a fundamental commitment to the well-being of our children and the financial security of hardworking families. No child should lose their health coverage due to bureaucratic hurdles or avoidable reasons, especially as we transition from the continuous enrollment provision established during the COVID-19 public health emergency.”
Deanna Williams, insurance navigator at the nonprofit Georgians for a Healthy Future, told Atlanta news outlet WABE in May 2024: “During this [unwinding] process, a lot of people are unsure or are still not aware what’s going on with it. And some of them just don’t know what’s their next step. And that’s one of the things that I’ve seen the most of.”
What Happens Next
KFF’s data shows that most redeterminations and disenrollments were completed by September 2024. KFF told Newsweek that the unwinding process had largely concluded, and as a result, it would no longer be updating its counts of Medicaid and CHIP disenrollment.
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