Just this month, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) issued a regulation asserting its right to financially penalize states that don't follow federal rules regarding Medicaid redeterminations. In September, CMS ordered 30 states to halt redeterminations until they could show their systems weren't removing the wrong people.

States have removed nearly 12 million people from Medicaid since April, when they began unwinding a pandemic-era continuous coverage policy that expired earlier this year, according to federal data compiled by KFF. More than 70% of disenrollments have been for “procedural reasons,” not because states determined the enrollees earn too much to qualify.

The biggest challenge that states are facing is locating the beneficiaries and then getting them re-enrolled in Medicaid. Mark Isenberg, EVP of Zotec Partners Healthcare Advocacy wrote an Op-Ed article regarding Indiana’s revolutionary approach to Medicare and Medicaid for 2024.  So, it is no surprise that Indiana is taking a unique approach to this critical issue.  The state's approach involves working with many other agencies, sometimes from other states, to get beneficiaries re-enrolled.  In Indiana, 35% of enrollees were dropped from the rolls, but 65% of those were returned as of Dec. 7.