Medicaid — the state-federal health insurance program for low-income and disabled Americans — has cut more than 22 million recipients since spring 2023. One of them was the son of Ashley Eades. Her family lost their Medicaid coverage in the "unwinding" of protections that had barred states from dropping people for years during the covid pandemic.
Many families, including Ashley's, still qualify for Medicaid but lost it for "procedural reasons." Basically, missing paperwork. The unwinding process has been messy.
In this episode, host Dan Weissmann talks with Ashley about the months she spent fighting to get her son reenrolled in 2023 to get an on-the-ground look at how the unwinding is affecting families. Then, Dan hears from staff at the Tennessee Justice Center, Joan Alker of Georgetown University's Center for Children and Families, and KFF Health News correspondent Brett Kelman, who has been covering Medicaid in Tennessee for years. Dan Weissmann @danweissmann Host and producer of "An Arm and a Leg.
" Previously, Dan was a staff reporter for Marketplace and Chicago's WBEZ. His work also appears on All Things Considered, Marketplace, the BBC, 99 Percent Invisible, and Reveal, from the Center for Investigative Reporting. Note: "An Arm and a Leg" uses speech-recognition software to generate transcripts, which may contain errors.
Please use the transcript as a tool but check the corresponding audio before quoting the podcast. Dan: Hey there. You know what we have NEVER talke.
