Arkansas Medicaid officials face a massive undertaking: redetermining the eligibility of hundreds of thousands of Medicaid enrollees after yearslong delays due to COVID-19. In a guest column for Talk Business & Politics, ACHI Health Policy Director Craig Wilson discusses the process, which Arkansas begins this month and aims to complete within six months.
Despite the state’s planning efforts, some Medicaid enrollees are likely to lose coverage despite eligibility, and many will be appropriately disenrolled because they are no longer eligible due to having moved out of the state, experienced an increase in income or family composition, or aged out of the program, according to Wilson. To maintain Medicaid’s critical safety net and secure continued viability for our healthcare system, we must ensure that those who are disenrolled are successfully connected with coverage elsewhere, he writes.
