'An Understaffed and Broken System': 900,000 Texans Have Lost Medicaid as Others Struggle to Access

[Celerity]

SNAP Benefits



https://www.reformaustin.org/trib/an-understaffed-and-broken-system-900000-texans-have-lost-medicaid-as-others-struggle-to-access-snap-benefits/



Almost 900,000 Texans have lost Medicaid since April and a backlog of applications has piled up, overwhelming the system and setting off a ripple effect that advocates worry is delaying families’ access to SNAP food benefits.

During the pandemic, federal regulations prohibited states from removing people from Medicaid, and more than 5 million Texans were able to access healthcare continuously. But these protections lifted in April and the state quickly began rechecking the eligibility of every individual in the program. In the months since the state launched this “unwinding,” hundreds of thousands have lost Medicaid coverage.

While some individuals have become ineligible because their incomes increased or they were children who aged out of the program, a majority — more than 600,000 — have been disenrolled in Texas because of procedural errors, according to KFF, a health policy research organization. This includes everything from sending in applications in the mail a day late to not including the correct documentation.

Without access to medical care, those who rely on the state’s health insurance — mainly children, but also women who recently gave birth and disabled adults — are left in anxious limbo where one health emergency could strap them with heavy debt. The reverberations of state employees being overwhelmed has led to Texans also losing access to their SNAP, or the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, after pandemic protections were lifted in March. Around 3.5 million Texans depend on food benefits.

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[Aristus]

1. Is it just liberal urban Texans who lost their Medicaid?

Or did conservative rural Texans lose theirs too?

Because, you know, there's an easy way to fix that, rural Texas...

Just sayin'...