In a survey of low-income adults across Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, and Texas, one in eight respondents who were enrolled in Medicaid at some point since March 2020 reported no longer having Medicaid coverage by late 2023, with nearly half of that pool reporting being currently uninsured, according to a study by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
The researchers conducted the survey from September to November 2023, about six months after the start of "Medicaid unwinding"-;the process by which states rechecked Medicaid enrollees' eligibility after the expiration of COVID-19-era coverage protections. We know from government statistics that, of the more than 90 million people whose health coverage was in jeopardy amid Medicaid unwinding, more than 23 million were removed from the program. But those statistics don't tell us what happened to those people, or why they lost coverage.
Our study is one of the first to help answer those outstanding questions, using completely new data from an original multi-state survey." Adrianna McIntyre, assistant professor of health policy and politics, lead author The study will be published June 29 in JAMA Health Forum. The researchers surveyed 2,210 adults ages 19 to 64 in those four states whose 2022 income was at or less than 138% of the federal poverty line.
Participants were asked whether they and/or their dependents had been enrolled in Medicaid at any point since March 2020, when states paused Medicaid disenrollment as part of t.
