States Can Begin Verifying Medicaid Eligibility for First Time in 3 Years

When people receive benefits they’re not supposed to get, that leaves less money for everything else the government does.

For months, advocates for more taxpayer-funded healthcare have warned of a looming drop in Medicaid coverage. They blamed this on the official end of the COVID-19 “public health emergency” and associated relief funds.

But as I pointed out earlier this year, the real issue is that millions of people have been receiving a taxpayer-funded benefit for which they no longer qualify. That’s because the relief funds in question were contingent on states not asking Medicaid enrollees whether they were still eligible for the program. The end of the public health emergency meant that states would resume doing what they had done for the first 50-plus years of Medicaid.