Medicaid enrollment has grown considerably since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. As of May 2021, total Medicaid and CHIP enrollment was at 82.8 million, up by 11.5 million since February 2020. This safety net has been critical to the health and well-being of millions of people, such as those who experienced job loss, and loss of employer-provided insurance coverage, due to the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.
As a condition of expanded federal funding, states had to agree to “Maintenance of Eligibility” (MOE) requirements to ensure the continuous coverage of certain Medicaid enrollees during the pandemic. These MOE requirements are active throughout the public health emergency, which has most recently been extended through mid-January 2022. This means that most state Medicaid redetermination processes have been on hold since March 2020, creating an enormous backlog of renewals.
