Medicaid ‘Unwinding’ Makes Other Public Assistance Harder to Get

Low-income families that need safety-net services, such as food and cash assistance, have become collateral damage in the bureaucratic scramble to determine whether tens of millions of people still qualify for Medicaid after a pandemic-era freeze on disenrollment ended this spring. These are people whose applications and renewal forms have been delayed or lost, or who, like Brost, can’t reach overwhelmed government call center workers. The impact on services for low-income families is an overlooked consequence of the Medicaid “unwinding,” which has led to coverage being terminated for millions of people since April, with millions more expected to lose coverage in the coming months. “The Medicaid unwinding has created huge problems for administrative staff,” said Leighton Ku, director of the Center for Health Policy Research at George Washington University’s Milken Institute School of Public Health.