Kids on PeachCare made up more than half of Medicaid coverage losses in Georgia, analysis says

Sam Sachs
·2 min read
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At the end of April, Channel 2 Action News reported that almost 600,000 Georgians had been taken off of Medicaid programs due to the Medicaid unwinding process.

Now, a study from Georgetown University says that more than half of those taken off of state-operated health insurance programs were children.

According to data from the Georgia Department of Community Health, 596,994 Georgians were removed from state health programs as of Feb. 29.

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The Georgetown University study says since the redetermination process started in April 2023, 300,073 children were disenrolled from Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) in Georgia.

Georgia’s version of CHIP is the PeachCare for Kids program.

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State officials said due to changed circumstances or a lack of response to verification questions from DCH, 42,779 patients were found ineligible for Medicaid and PeachCare, equal to 41% of those examined by the end of February.

Another 35,581 people, both adults and children, were procedurally terminated from the state’s health programs, according to DCH. However, Georgia officials said more than 8,400 of the terminations were due to changes in income, household composition, patients aging out of coverage and others moving out of state.

“This additional data decreases the rate of procedural terminations to 64% of total terminations and 26% of all determinations due in March,” DCH said in a release.

Still, the Georgetown University release said the decline in enrollment of children on Child Medicaid and CHIP plans in Georgia was equal to 7% of the national decline. Half of all children removed or disenrolled from Medicaid for the United States live in Texas, Florida, Georgia and California, according to the study.

Due to the high volume of child disenrollment from state-managed health programs, Health and Human Services Sec. Xavier Becerra sent letters to Georgia and eight other states regarding how they managed the programs and the high numbers of children losing health coverage.

As previously reported by Channel 2 Action News, Georgia’s Medicaid unwinding process will end at the end of May, according to state officials.

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