Ohio among top states for number of kids kicked off Medicaid, CHIP

More than 120,000 Ohio kids have been disenrolled from Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program or CHIP, and most were removed for procedural reasons rather than a lack of eligibility.

The numbers mirror a nationwide trend of more than four million kids uninsured, according to a new report by the Georgetown Center for Children and Families.

Kelly Vyzral, senior health policy associate for the Children's Defense Fund-Ohio, said Ohio ranks fifth in the nation for the number of kids who have lost health coverage.

"We had almost 1.4 million children enrolled in Medicaid in April of 2023," Vyzral recounted. "Then we look at December of 2023, and there were 1.2 million children. So that's a 9% change and an actual number difference of 121,577 children."

Medicaid and CHIP income eligibility is set at a higher level for children than parents, so many of the children who lost coverage during the unwinding likely still meet income eligibility guidelines, even if their parents no longer qualify.

Vyzral expects the ramifications of widespread coverage losses will reach far into the future.

"Medical debt in this country is a real problem," Vyzral asserted. "It affects millions of families who lose their homes, who lose everything over medical debt."

Joan Alker, executive director of the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families and co-author of the report, said states had many choices about how to structure the unwinding process and how quickly they took action to remove children from Medicaid enrollment.

"States that saw a really large number of children disenrolling, I place that squarely on the governor," Alker emphasized. "Because the folks doing the work needed the resources, they needed the staffing, they needed the procedures and the effort to make this a smoother process than it has been."

Research shows children in families of color, particularly Black and Latino families, have been more likely to experience gaps in health coverage.