Eligibility checks for Medicaid were paused during the pandemic. Many people are still losing coverage in the bureaucratic jumble that has ensued since they resumed.
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Ordinarily, people enrolled in Medicaid — government-provided health insurance for people with low incomes or disabilities — go through eligibility checks every year to determine whether they can renew coverage. But in March 2020, the federal government froze the checks as part of its public health emergency. So people were continuously enrolled in Medicaid, and no one was dropped for three years.
That stopped when President Joe Biden ended the emergency in the spring. Many months later, Medicaid enrollees across the country are still getting letters like Olenski’s as part of the “unwinding” process, which is scheduled to continue through May. After that, the pre-pandemic status quo resumes.
As of Dec. 20, at least 13 million people had been disenrolled from Medicaid in 2023, according to an analysis by KFF, a nonprofit group focused on health policy. Net enrollment in the program (given that some people were newly enrolled or have re-enrolled) has dropped by around 7.8 million, according to an analysis by the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families.
My wife lost Medicaid and now has to choose between any chance of ever getting our own place, or being able to live without nearly constant pain.
Sure do love all this American dream I’m living.
Be productive or die. That’s the message they’re sending.
That’s what antivax is. That’s what being against masks was. That’s what crushing obamacare was. That’s what deregulation is all about. And that’s what the republican platform is built on. Be useful or die. Can’t make healthy babies? Just die. Can’t afford healthcare? Just die. Survival of the fittest (e.g. wealthiest) until the world ends.
No. Being productive has nothing to do with anything. How many times in your life would you have gotten on your knees to have a plumber or a car mechanic or a EMT or an electrician or heck even someone who could make a decent breakfast? How many times in your life have you demanded the universe give you an investment banker, a public policy analyst, an economist, or someone who sits on thinktanks?
I would like us to grasp the idea that the value we produce is not connected to the compensation for that value. You can explain it to my landlord who has never worked a day in his life and inherited 17 homes.
