Hundreds of thousands of Alabamians have been unenrolled from Medicaid following the expiration of federal pandemic restrictions.
Some 370,000 Alabama residents have been removed from Medicaid after federal government rules that barred states from removing anyone throughout the coronavirus pandemic expired in 2023. Medicaid provides health insurance to low income individuals and families, and covers around one in five people across the United States.
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According to a report by the Alabama Reflector, as of April this year, 745,771 people enrolled in Medicaid in the state had renewed their coverage, while 369,554 people were removed.
The removal number includes 47,968 enrollees who were determined ineligible and 321,586 who were unenrolled for administrative reasons, such as not returning required paperwork in time. Between June 2023 and April 2024, Alabama's Medicaid enrollment fell by 16.7 percent, more than 5 percentage points more than the national average of 11.4 percent. By April 2024, the state's enrollment was around 1.1 million, down from 1.4 million the previous year.
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Newsweek has contacted Alabama's Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) via the contact form on the CMS website for confirmation of these figures.
"People who are no longer eligible for Medicaid in Alabama will be removed since the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency (PHE) ended, and states are required by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to redetermine eligibility," Melanie Cleveland, a spokeswoman for the Alabama Medicaid Agency told the Alabama Reflector in November 2023, when it emerged that more than 50,000 had lost their coverage after federal rules expired on May 11, 2023.
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KFF Health estimated in April 2023 that around 170,000 Alabama residents, including 79,000 children, would lose their Medicaid coverage between March 2023 and May 2024. Across the U.S., KFF estimated that 16,599,800 would no longer be enrolled in the program by May this year.
Alabama is one of ten states that has not adopted Medicaid expansions under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) signed by former President Barack Obama in 2010, which expanded Medicaid to nearly all adults ages 19 to 64 who earn up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level. As of January 2024, that includes any single person making $15,060 a year or less if they live in the contiguous U.S., with different thresholds in place for Alaska and Hawaii.
The first expansions came into effect in 2014 in some states.
Out of the 10 remaining states (Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Wisconsin, and Wyoming) that have not expanded Medicaid coverage an estimated 1.5 million people are considered to fall into the "coverage gap" as of February this year, according to KFF, which means their incomes are too high to qualify for their state's Medicaid programs but are still below federal poverty levels.
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Aliss Higham is a Newsweek reporter based in Glasgow, Scotland. Her focus is reporting on issues across the U.S., including ... Read more
