Medicaid rolls are being cut. Few are finding refuge in ACA plans.
By Amy Goldstein Washington Post 9/23/2023
As states prepared to end a pandemic-era promise earlier this year that everyone on Medicaid could keep their health coverage, the Biden administration sought to quell fears that millions of people would become newlyuninsured. A policy favorite of the president’s — Affordable Care Act insurance marketplaces — would offer a haven for people losing Medicaid because their incomes had grown too high to qualify, his aides pledged.
Yet in the months since the culling began within the nation’s largest public insurance program, the insurance marketplaces selling low-cost, private health plans so farare serving a surprisinglysmall role as a backstop for 2 million people acrossthe country dropped from the safety-net coverage because they no longer are eligible.
Interviews with insurance exchanges, enrollment coaches and health-care advocates in 10 states, plus leading health policy experts, suggestthe administration’s prediction of a smooth transition from Medicaid to the marketplaces is a reality in a few states — but a myth in other parts of the country.
