Federal law generally banned states from dropping people, and federal officials said Idaho acted improperly. Idaho officials, however, said they didn’t think they did anything wrong.
The episode, revealed in documents KHN obtained through a public records request and in interviews with state officials, offers a preview of what could soon unfold across the United States for millions of people covered through Medicaid, the federal-state health insurance program for people with low incomes.
Idaho Gov. Brad Little was among 25 Republican governors who told President Joe Biden in a December letter that, by keeping ineligible people on the Medicaid rolls, the mandate was “negatively affecting states.” The emails, sent last spring and summer, detail Idaho’s rationale for the terminations, CMS’ concerns, and the state’s efforts to restore benefits.
“What they were saying early on,” Leach told KHN, “is, basically, we didn’t do enough outreach to really prove that this person was no longer in Idaho and not eligible for Medicaid.”For the first two years of the pandemic, when Idaho received returned mail with an out-of-state forwarding address or no forwarding address — possibly indicating the enrollee no longer lived in Idaho — Leach said state officials would call them.
In one of the emails the Idaho Medicaid agency sent to CMS last July, the state said it was reviewing the extent to which it needed to pay medical bills the program had originally rejected.
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