A new report from US Health and Human services shows Medicaid enrollment among South Dakota children is down 27 percent from this spring.
That’s tied for worst in the nation.
More than 27,500 child who were on Medicaid in March are no longer enrolled.
That’s according to numbers reported by the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services, which ends in September.
The drop is partly due to the end of the federal public health emergency for COVID 19, which prohibited states from dropping those enrolled in the program.
US Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Bacerra sent Gov. Kristi Noem a letter on Monday to express "deep alarm" at the drop in coverage for South Dakota kids.
"Children are more likely than their parents to qualify for Medicaid due to higher income eligibility thresholds for children in Medicaid and CHIP," Sec. Bacerra wrote. "This means that as children go through the renewals process, many children should still be Medicaid or CHIP eligible and should not be getting disenrolled."
CMS officials say the state should adopt policies that make Medicaid renewal easier for people.
Daniel Tsai is the director of the Medicaid program at the federal level. In an interview with SDPB, he encourages states to adopt flexible policies that get and help keep children enrolled.
“We firmly believe, and we see in the data, that the policy choices a state makes has a material impact on whether eligible people stay covered," Tsai said.
The South Dakota Department of Social Services was unavailable for an interview about large drop in child Medicaid coverage.
Last November, DSS officials told lawmakers many adults eligible for Medicaid expansion show up to the physician’s office, find out they’re eligible and then enroll. They expect it to take 24 months to get the state’s eligible people fully enrolled.
Tsai said there are better ways to keep children enrolled in Medicaid.
“It is not a good way to run healthcare across the country to have eligible people, including kids, lose coverage, or unknown to them lose coverage for some period of time, and they show up at the pharmacy for a need for some really essential medication and find out they’re uninsured and need to go through the process of reinstating coverage," Tsai said.
As the state has rolled out Medicaid expansion for adults, officials say it’s taking an average of 24 days to process Medicaid applications.
