Removals pick up 82K lost coverage in August

MASSHEALTH

State House News Service

About 82,000 Bay Staters lost MassHealth coverage in August, another sizable drop in enrollment as the state reaches an "inflection point" in a year-long effort to review eligibility for every single member.

Total enrollment in Mass-Health, which combines Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program under one umbrella, fell for the third straight month with additional drops forecast in the near future, officials announced Thursday.

Massachusetts is now five months into a campaign to determine how many of the 2.4 million people on MassHealth rolls in April still qualify for the publicly funded health insurance. The federal government prohibited people from losing Medicaid coverage during the pandemic. That policy has since ended, requiring all 50 states to embark on a similarly gargantuan review.

So far, a total of about 208,000 people have departed MassHealth since April 1, according to the latest state data. Normal new enrollments have continued in that span, cutting the net drop in the caseload to about 64,000 or 2.66 percent.

In August, about 20,000 new enrollments - which officials described as "within a typical monthly range" - offset the 82,000 disenrollments, leading to a net caseload drop of 62,000 people. Before COVID-19 hit, the state typically removed about 52,000 people from MassHealth per month.

Assistant Secretary for MassHealth Mike Levine said officials are so far "seeing what we expected."

The administration projected before the campaign began that it would lead to a net reduction of 300,000 to 400,000 people over the course of the year, freeing up $1.9 billion in state funding in fiscal year 2024 to be spent elsewhere.

Levine said Thursday the next two months should give a much better sense if that forecast remains accurate.

"I would say we're at an inflection point right now. We're starting to see, again, the more significant drops, and we're going to see that through the fall. So I'll have a much better answer for you in I'd say two months based on two more months of experience," Levine said. "But nothing that we have seen yet suggests we're in a very different ballpark than that [300,000 to 400,000]."

While MassHealth numbers continue to drop, the Massachusetts Health Connector marketplace has been adding more and more people, especially to subsidized and ConnectorCare plans.

Total enrollment in MassHealth fell for the third straight month with additional drops forecast in the near future.