Indianapolis, Indiana – Medicaid benefits that were offered during the pandemic are currently being phased off.
On April 1, notices informing Medicaid recipients that they would be disenrolled within 30 days due to a change in eligibility were sent out.
Medicaid was available to those who were unable to obtain private or employer-based health insurance during the pandemic.
“Those rules prevented folks from getting disenrolled, and they didn’t have any kind of cost sharing, they didn’t have to pay for premiums for their health insurance, they didn’t have to pay for any deductibles,” said Susan Jo Thomas, the Executive Director of Covering Kids and Families of Indiana.
CKF is a nonprofit that assists Indiana residents in obtaining and maintaining insurance.
Only Utah has more residents at risk of getting dropped from classes than 500,000 Hoosiers.
“There’s 6.7 million people that live in Indiana and 2.2 (million) of them are now enrolled in the Medicaid program,” Thomas said.
Even those who are allowed to switch to a different health insurer might not be able to continue seeing Medicaid-approved providers.
“We are really worried about what can happen if folks don’t know what’s coming,” Thomas said.
There are currently no official statistics on how many people have been unenrolled, according to Indiana’s Family and Social Services Administration, who also claim that they are still in the process of reevaluating subscribers’ eligibility.
“One of the pieces of coming off the Medicaid program is that you are likely eligible for the federal marketplace, also known as the Affordable Care Act,” Thomas said.
The availability of COVID-19 vaccines and testing supplies has ended due to the public health emergency associated with the disease. The Marion County Health Department claims it will keep providing the vaccine at no cost.
