If Missouri’s lengthy application backlogs are any indication, the nation is on course for a mass-scale disruption in people’s Medicaid benefits.
“It’s going to be a lot of work for everyone,” said Miranda Brown, who helps people apply for benefits as outreach coordinator for theBrown said she recently called a state office on behalf of a client toward the end of the day. She waited on hold for an hour only to be told by a caseworker that the agency couldn’t process any more cases that day.
South Carolina planned to hire “a couple hundred workers” beginning this spring to help manage renewals at the end of the public health emergency, said Nicole Mitchell Threatt, deputy director of eligibility, enrollment, and member services at the Department of Health and Human Services. The turnover rate among eligibility workers was about 25% from July 2020 to June 2021, jumping from a 15% rate in the previous 12 months.
In the suburbs of Kansas City, Missouri, Stacey Whitford, 41, applied in December for Medicaid for herself and her 13-year-old son. Her son needs hearing aids that she said cost $2,500 apiece without insurance. She also lined up a support worker for the boy, who has autism, through the Department of Mental Health but said she was told the worker can begin only once her son is enrolled in Medicaid.
Whitford spent hours on the phone trying to sort out the status of their applications, then on March 31, just shy of four months after applying, they were finally approved.But Elliott, the mother of four in Salem, is still waiting. She gave up calling the state’s Medicaid helpline after growing frustrated from spending hours on hold and being disconnected because of high call volumes. Instead, she checks on her application through the enrollment specialists at the clinic where she applied.
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