Three years ago, in March 2020, as the pandemic began, Congress authorized emergency funding bill that allowed millions of Americans to keep their Medicaid coverage without having to get re-certified every year. The goal was to prevent Medicaid recipients from losing coverage during the public health emergency.
Since the policy went into effect, Leah Chan, a senior health analyst at the Georgia Budget and Policy, the number of Georgians insured through Medicaid or PeachCare for Kids has jumped 40%. “Most of the folks covered by Medicaid and PeachCare are actually kids,” Chan says. “And what they’re most at risk for are procedural denials. That’s when the form gets sent to the wrong address or the form is sent to the right address, but it’s in a language that the parents don’t understand.”
