Of the half a million Floridians, nearly 260,000
kids dropped from coverage as of Aug. 2023
Florida House Democrats today released a new alarming analysis of State Medicaid reports that show 524,076 Floridians—including 257,901 children—have lost Medicaid coverage in the last four months. The analysis, conducted by House Democratic Office staff based on Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) monthly enrollment reports, highlights the number of Floridians that were disenrolled from Medicaid since the State resumed Medicaid eligibility redeterminations in April 2023. These findings provide a new perspective on the staggering scope of coverage losses across Florida every month, including disenrollment data broken down by county and age of disenrolled individual, during the Medicaid unwinding process.
Florida House Democrats say the data shows that coverage losses have impacted low-income families and children in every community across Florida. Noting that states have 14 months to complete the redetermination process, we say that this process is too important to rush, and call for the Governor to pause the Medicaid disenrollment process and dedicate more resources to help Florida families maintain health care coverage.
During the pause the DeSantis administration should:
- Utilize the funding the Legislature included in the 2023-24 FY budget to expand the Department of Children & Families’ customer call center capacity;
- Provide additional training to DCF staff and increase the number of automated eligibility renewals;
- Implement available federal flexibilities to improve the redetermination process, as every other state in the nation has done; and
- Develop a public dashboard to report renewal, disenrollment, and demographic data, especially regarding the age of disenrolled individuals. Over 40 states, including Texas, have such a dashboard.
Caucus members offered the following statements:
“We should be doing everything possible to ensure Floridians have the freedom to be healthy, prosperous, and safe. Unfortunately, the DeSantis policy of ‘if it ain’t woke don’t fix it’ is leaving hundreds of thousands of Florida’s children without health care coverage while he focuses on his own ambitions,” said Leader Fentrice Driskell (D-Tampa). “This clearly demonstrates the concerns we’ve had about Florida’s Medicaid Unwinding process, especially the high number of kids from low-income families losing health care coverage. Over a quarter of a million children across the state have been disenrolled from Medicaid since April, while only over 20,000 have been enrolled in Florida Healthy Kids, leaving around 237,000 to potentially slip through the cracks. That is unacceptable.”
“Florida is second in the nation, behind Texas, in the number of people being disenrolled from Medicaid. But, it gets worse. More than 55% of those Floridians were denied for procedural reasons not because they were ineligible,” said Representative Kelly Skidmore (D-Boca Raton). “There is a growing chorus of organizations asking for disenrollments to pause until the Department of Children and Families can determine eligibility. Instead, DCF is doing the opposite and charging forward. If Governor DeSantis would spend more time here than in Iowa he might be able to help and provide leadership. The State of Florida can, and should, be doing so much more to prevent eligible Floridians from being denied access to health care.”
“This shows that kids are getting left behind and not getting connected with the Florida Healthy Kids program,” added Representative Robin Bartleman (D-Weston). “Going without health care coverage means Florida’s government is failing these children and their families. Keeping kids healthy is not a partisan issue. Last session, I was proud to work with Speaker Renner to unanimously pass my bill expanding eligibility for the Florida Healthy Kids program to help families facing the CHIP eligibility cliff. Unfortunately, what we are seeing is the same problem for Medicaid but on a much bigger scale.”
“In four months, 13,402 children in Duval County lost their Medicaid coverage. Statewide, there have been over 52,000 coverage terminations in the infant to 5-year-old age group. We are talking about babies losing dependable health care coverage,” said Representative Angie Nixon (D-Jacksonville). “Think about how frustrating it is to wait on hold for half an hour when you call your cable or credit card company, then imagine how frustrating and stressful it would be if instead you were calling your state government about your child’s health care. Parents are facing an average wait time of over 30 minutes when they call DCF’s call center. As the state agency charged with verifying children and families’ Medicaid eligibility, they must do better to ensure Floridians are receiving help in a timely manner.”
“The DeSantis Administration has continuously downplayed these Medicaid coverage losses, and said advocates who raised alarms about Florida’s failures were ‘woke activists,’ as if keeping kids healthy was a radical agenda,” said Representative Rita Harris (D-Orlando). “Our state health care agencies should be taking this crisis seriously and do more to prevent these kids from falling through the cracks of our broken health care system, instead of pushing DeSantis’ extremist, unfounded public health conspiracies. He likes to talk about wanting to ‘let kids be kids,’ and that should start with making sure their health and safety is our number one priority.”
The analysis of Florida Medicaid coverage losses is attached and attributable to House Democratic Office Staff.
