KFF begins tracking and monitoring Medicaid unwinding

Now that pandemic-era protections have expired, states will disenroll millions of people from Medicaid over the next 12 months, the exact number of which will depend in part on state policies and administrative infrastructures. To keep up with the changes, KFF’s new Medicaid Enrollment and Unwinding Tracker provides the latest state-level Medicaid/CHIP enrollment data for all 50 states and the District of Columbia as well as any unwinding data on monthly renewals, disenrollments, and other measures that may be available for states.

The tracker also provides information on state-specific Medicaid renewal policies, eligibility policies, and system capacity measures. The tool includes national data on Medicaid enrollment as reported by the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS); however, these data lag by several months and do not provide a current picture of net changes in Medicaid enrollment.

Five states began Medicaid disenrollments in April and 14 states began in May. The remaining states (31) will start the process in June or later. Arizona – one of the first states to begin disenrollments – is the only one so far to report a decrease in monthly Medicaid/CHIP enrollment since March 2023. More state-level Medicaid enrollment data will become available this summer.

KFF has estimated that between 8 and 24 million enrollees could lose Medicaid coverage as states unwind the continuous enrollment provision. The provision, which expired at the end of March, prevented states from disenrolling people from Medicaid in exchange for enhanced federal Medicaid funding. Medicaid enrollment grew by an estimated 23.3 million people nationally, to nearly 95 million people, from February 2020 to March 2023.