The federal government is requiring Minnesota and 28 other states to restart coverage for a large subset of Medicaid enrollees who may have mistakenly lost benefits this summer through a procedural glitch.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Service (HHS) announced the requirement Thursday. These states, the agency says, need to improve an auto-renewal process that lets some beneficiaries maintain coverage without additional documentation.
Federal regulators say some still-eligible beneficiaries may have wrongly lost coverage in Minnesota and other states due to auto-renewal problems.
States this year have been resuming coverage redeterminations in Medicaid, the state-federal program providing health insurance coverage for about 1.5 million lower-income and disabled state residents in Minnesota.
The renewals, where the government checks to make sure people are still eligible for benefits, were suspended during the COVID-19 public health emergency. As they've resumed, the federal government says nearly 500,000 children and other individuals have been improperly disenrolled from coverage nationally.
State officials say they're still working to identify Minnesotans who may be affected by this change and the timeline for restoring coverage.
"Nearly half a million individuals, including children, will have their coverage reinstated, and many more will be protected going forward," Xavier Becerra, the HHS Secretary, said in a news release. "We will continue to work with states for as long as needed to help prevent anyone eligible for Medicaid … from being disenrolled."
The problem is that Minnesota, other states and the District of Columbia have been doing auto-renewals across entire households, rather than for individuals within households. That's an issue since many kids might still qualify for coverage when parents don't.