The end of the public health emergency (PHE) brings with it the end of the continuous enrollment provision in Medicaid, which required states to maintain individuals on their Medicaid rolls even if they were no longer eligible for the program. In a new insight, Health Care Policy Analyst Jackson Hammond discusses the basics of continuous enrollment and the expected impacts on insurance coverage as the PHE ends.

Hammond concludes:

The end of the continuous enrollment provision will lead to significant, but ultimately brief, disruption in the number of insured individuals. Tens of millions will be disenrolled from Medicaid, most of whom were ineligible for the safety net program due to income or having other sources of coverage. States have been preparing for months for this exact event, so levels of churn may be far lower than initially predicted. Still, policymakers at both the state and federal levels should look for ways to ensure the smoothest transition possible.

Read the analysis