***MEDIA ADVISORY FOR MONDAY, NOVEMBER 6 AT 3:00 PM ET // 12:00 PM PT***
New Report Finds That If All States Did as Well as the 10 Best States, Millions of People Would Not Have Been Terminated from Medicaid Because of Missing Paperwork
Washington, DC – On Monday, November 6, 2023 at 3:00 PM ET // 12:00 PM PT, U.S. Representatives Steven Horsford (D-NV-04) and Jill Tokuda (D-HI-02), will join civil rights leaders and Protect Our Care for a press conference to call on state leaders to halt procedural disenrollments from Medicaid until they have reduced such terminations to the lowest achievable level. Over 70% of those disenrolled were terminated because of nothing more than missing paperwork. The groups will release a new report detailing how, only six months into the unwinding of the pandemic-era Medicaid continuous eligibility requirements, more people have lost Medicaid than during any two-year period in history, more than have of whom are from communities of color. The report will provide the country’s first documentation of several things: (1) the size of current coverage losses, compared to past losses; (2) the racial and ethnic composition of people terminated from Medicaid; and (3) the central importance of state variation in driving Medicaid terminations.
Congress passed legislation at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic to protect access to Medicaid by ensuring no one could be disenrolled during the public health emergency. This provision, which has helped secure the lowest level of uninsured Americans ever, expired on April 1.
The report is co-authored by 10 leading civil rights and health equity organizations: the Asian and Pacific Islander American Health Forum, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, NAACP, the National Council of Negro Women, the National Urban League, the National Council of Urban Indian Health, the Southern Poverty Law Center, UnidosUS, the Coalition on Human Needs, and Protect Our Care.
PRESS CALL:
WHO:
U.S. Representative Steven Horsford (D-NV-04), Chair, Congressional Black Caucus
U.S. Representative Jill Tokuda (D-HI-02), Member, Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus
Juliet K. Choi, President and CEO, Asian & Pacific Islander American Health Forum
Derrick Johnson, President and CEO, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
Shavon Arline-Bradley, President and CEO, National Council of Negro Women
Marc Morial, President and CEO, National Urban League
Eric Rodriguez, Senior Vice President for Policy and Advocacy at UnidosUS
Leslie Dach, Chair, Protect Our Care
WHAT: Virtual Press Conference
WHERE: Register for the Event Here
WHEN: Nov 6, 2023 at 3:00 PM ET // 12:00 PM PT