More than 150,000 Ohio Medicaid beneficiaries who had their coverage dropped at the beginning of this year will now be reinstated.
It’s the result of a recent legal settlement reached with the state. Anne Glausser from member station WCPN in Cleveland reports.
This year the state changed the system it uses to reenroll Medicaid beneficiaries and the result was that nearly 200,000 low-income Ohioans were bumped from the program. “The new system had automatic terminations. So instead of previously when a caseworker had to touch the case, look to see if the person had responded, do all those sorts of things, the system would automatically terminate the individual if a box wasn’t checked after renewal,” said the Legal Aid Society of Columbus’s Kate McGarvey.
McGarvey’s group filed suit against the state in March, saying Ohio’s new system did not follow federal guidelines for deciding who is eligible for automatic re-enrollment. They also claim there were issues in the way Medicaid beneficiaries were notified about their loss of coverage.
With this settlement, at least 150,000 individuals will be reinstated on Medicaid with retroactive coverage to the beginning of the year.
