Hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvanians could lose their Medicaid coverage in the year after the COVID-19 public health emergency officially ends.

The state’s Medicaid rolls have grown by approximately 600,000 during the pandemic, and under the terms Congress set for states to receive additional federal funding to support their Medicaid programs, the state was prohibited from re-evaluating the eligibility of those receiving Medicaid and removing them from the state’s Medicaid rolls if they were found ineligible.  Once the pandemic officially ends, however, states will once again be able to review the eligibility of their Medicaid participants.  In Pennsylvania today, that amounts to approximately 3.4 million people.

The loss of Medicaid eligibility would be a major blow to those currently receiving care through the program and the providers that are being paid for the care they deliver to qualified recipients.  This could pose a special challenge for Pennsylvania’s safety-net hospitals, which care for disproportionately large numbers of Medicaid patients.

Learn more about the coming challenge of reviewing Medicaid eligibility in the WESA-FM report “As COVID-19 subsides, thousands of Pennsylvanians could lose Medicaid coverage.”