Thousands of kids in Florida lost Medicaid coverage on Easter — nearly half a million over past year

Nearly half-a-million children in Florida have lost Medicaid coverage over the past year, after the DeSantis administration and Florida Republican lawmakers chose to not extend Medicaid coverage as the COVID pandemic was declared officially over. Florida reportedly is the only state in the nation to not adopt the Biden administration’s strategies to “minimize terminations for procedural reasons.”

Thousands of children on Easter Sunday lost coverage, NBC6 reported.

“Florida has dropped over 1.3 million people, including 460,000 children, from its state Medicaid program since April 1, 2023, after the end of a pandemic-era policy that banned states from removing ineligible participants from the health insurance program for disabled and low-income people,” the Orlando Sentinel reports.

The reasons for Florida dropping 1.3 million from Medicaid are varied, including improvement in economic status, or just “red tape.”

U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra has issued strong criticism of Florida’s actions.

“Children in Florida have ‘without a doubt’ lost coverage due to paperwork snafus,” Secretary Becerra told the Sentinel. “Becerra previously sent a letter to DeSantis and eight other governors expressing concern about the large number of children who had lost coverage due to red tape.”

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“It continues to not just disturb but confound, I think, a lot of folks that some states have chosen not to address the loss of health care by so many children,” Becerra also said. “… Denying that child those services is not just unconscionable, it’s a nightmare for the family.”

In January the Tallahassee Democrat reported, “the Sunshine State, with 2.5 million uninsured, also has one of the nation’s highest shares of residents without health coverage.”

“In turning back a program that could bring health coverage to roughly 1 million Floridians, Gov. Ron DeSantis and Republican supermajorities in the House and Senate also are rejecting about $5.6 billion in federal aid which would come in the first two years of expansion, and about $4.4 billion annually after that.”

Last year HuffPost‘s Jonathan Cohn reported Florida’s uninsured amounts to “about 12% of its population, which is well above the national average of 8.6%. It’s also more than all but four other states,” Cohn added. “Floridians without insurance suffer because when they can’t pay for their medical care, they end up in debt or go without needed treatment or both. The state suffers, too, because it ends up with a sicker, less productive workforce as well as a higher charity care load for its hospitals, clinics and other pieces of the medical safety net. DeSantis could do something about this. He has refused.”

Meanwhile. The Florida Policy Institute reported last month, “Florida is the only state that has not opted to utilize policy flexibilities offered by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to reduce the number of children losing coverage due to system error or red tape.”

Florida has its own children’s health care alternative to Medicaid, Florida’s Children’s Health Insurance Program, or KidCare, which “offers free, subsidized and full-pay insurance for kids whose parents make too much money to qualify for Medicaid,” according to the Sentinel.

But coverage differs from Medicaid, as a report from WFLA shows. The DeSantis administration is suing to try to force the Biden administration to drop a federal policy that requires children to be allowed to stay on the state’s plan even if their parents miss payments.

Dropping 1.3 million people in Florida exacerbates an existing health care problem.

Late last month the South Florida Sun Sentinel reported, “More than 1,300 babies a year, about four a day, die in Florida.” That report, the first in a series of three is titled, “Born to die: Florida’s infant mortality crisis.”

“Health experts say the losses of new life will continue unless the state rethinks how it fails mothers before and during pregnancy,” the paper observed. “The biggest risk to an infant’s health is always the mother’s health. When mothers have preexisting conditions, like diabetes, obesity or heart disease, their babies face a higher risk of death. Everything from Florida’s impenetrable insurance structure to its ineffective investment in maternal and prenatal health contributes to the high rate of babies who die within their first year of life, sometimes within their first minutes.”

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“Compared to a decade ago, pregnant women in Florida are older, less healthy and have more complications during birth, according to Florida Department of Health maternal health records. They also are living in a state where access to insurance — or the right insurance — is a barrier to primary and prenatal care.”

The Sun Sentinel also offered these statistics:

“Six of every 1,000 babies born in Florida die before their first birthday, a rate that exceeds the national average of 5.6. Florida babies die mostly from birth defects that affect eating or breathing, infections prevalent in preterm and low birthweight babies, and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Most infants in Florida who die under the age of 1 die within their very first month. Black babies in Florida die twice as often as white non-Hispanic and Hispanic babies.”

The paper says insurance is a major factor.

“One-fifth of Florida women ages 19 to 44 have no health insurance, which is worse than 46 other states,” while “Florida is one of only 10 states where the Affordable Care Act’s expansion of Medicaid for low-income adults has not been implemented. That means thousands of women of child-bearing age can’t get Medicaid health insurance for primary care who would have coverage in expansion states like Virginia or New York.”