DCF: State terminated Medicaid for thousands of South Floridians over technicalities
MIAMI - The state terminated Medicaid enrollment for thousands of South Floridians over technicalities, according to a Florida Department of Children and Families report filed with federal regulators last month.
While a DCF spokesperson said an immediate fix is available and more than 80% of Medicaid recipients currently having their eligibility reviewed responding to requests for updated information, patient advocates see delays hurting families.
"It's a little personal for me," Shirley Dominguez, Navigation Program Coodinator for Epilepsy Alliance Florida.
Dominguez almost teared up over it: life with a safety net missing when you need it most to cover doctor bills.
"You never know when you get that knock on the door that you have to tap into your health insurance," she said.
Doctors diagnosed Dominguez with uterine cancer in 2017. It happened one month after she landed work with benefits steadier than Medicaid.
Six years later, what happened to more 200,000 people including less fortunate clients she serves through Epilepsy Alliance Florida's Navigation Program, leaves people more vulnerable than Dominguez can believe.
"We have children that have leukemia," she said. "We have people that are disabled that have been terminated by procedural reasons and that is concerning," she said.
The COVID-19 pandemic led to a moratorium on any state removing people from the government's free income-based health insurance rolls. The public health emergency order ended in April. Since then, all 50 states began trimming Medicaid rolls.
Florida Department of Children and Families chose to review cases on a rolling basis. The first group selected included 606,702 Medicaid recipients in April, according to a report DCF sent to regulators Centers for Medicare Services May 9th. At the time, the state had no completed reviews for 145,380 of those clients, according to the report.
However, 82% of the cases terminated happened for "procedural reasons" such as failure to respond. Many did not respond to messages to renew and update personal information with the state.
"Something is wrong with the system," Alison Yager, Executive Director for the Florida Health Justice Project said. "It means that people are falling through the cracks. What's happening with so many people is they're not getting those communications or they're not realizing that that piece of mail was an important piece of mail from the state and maybe it ended up in the trash inadvertantly or they've moved four times over the last three years and they haven't remembered to update their address with the state."
A DCF spokesperson responded with an emailed statement.
"Our department has a robust campaign including up to 13 direct contact attempts to customers who do not submit a timely application," Mallory McManus, Deputy Chief of Staff for Florida Department of Children and Families said. "The department is utilizing an aggressive text and email effort in addition to traditional mail and if all of those efforts are unsuccessful, we are calling customers to inform them that their redetermination is past due and to encourage them to respond to the department. Those efforts have significantly improved the response rate compared to previous redetermination cycles. We will continue to implement these customer-focused approaches to ensure individuals who are eligible maintain their Medicaid coverage."
McManus said people who fail to submit timely response, they have 90 days to submit their information to gain retroactive coverage.
Still, advocate Carolyn Thomson, an Epilepsy Alliance navigator helping people in Monroe County with enrollment meets clients who find out that they no longer have Medicaid coverage when those people visit doctors or emergency rooms. Those trying to fix their status struggle to reset online logins, she said.
"Wait time can be three to five hours on the phone being on hold," Thomson said. "They do shut off the phones at 5pm. So you might want to get your call in early."
With at least 20% of the state's Medicaid recipients concentrated in Miami-Dade County, advocates said they are doubling down and working hard to spread word about Medicaid changes. A DCF spokesperson said state officials are doing the same.