GOP Bill’s Unheralded Changes In Rules Could Undermine Health of Neediest

In California, the potential loss of federal dollars caused by the rollback of the expansion would be massive. The state Legislative Analyst’s Office estimated last month that the Golden State is slated to receive more than $17 billion from the federal government for the Medi-Cal expansion in 2017-18.

“We’re talking about a big shift in costs to the state of California and potentially a major loss in coverage,” said UC Berkeley’s Jacobs.

The GOP legislation, which is scheduled for a vote on the House floor on Thursday, would impose the new renewal requirement on expansion enrollees starting Oct. 1.

“They’re saying to states that do the expansion, ‘We’ll cover people who are continuously in the program, but we’ll make it really hard for people to be continuously in the program,’” Jacobs said.

Wolf Faulkins, a resident of Mariposa, Calif., who enrolled in Medi-Cal in 2014 as a result of the expansion, said the proposed rule change regarding renewal would add one more layer to Medi-Cal’s already considerable bureaucratic requirements, none of them logical or simple.

“If I were more of a senior citizen than I am now, I would be overwhelmed” by it, Faulkins, 61, said. “I would not be a happy camper.” But he would complete the extra paperwork, he added, because his Medi-Cal coverage keeps him alive: Among other things, he has a heart condition and high blood pressure as well as knee and hand ailments.

Senderling-McDonald said the new paperwork will lead some enrollees to drop out for two reasons: Either they’re no longer eligible, or they’re eligible but the new bureaucratic hurdle stops them.

Faulkins agreed. Even though he would jump through the necessary hoops to keep his coverage, some others probably wouldn’t, he guessed. “There are people who are just going to say, ‘It’s important, but it’s too overwhelming. There’s no one to advocate for me. There’s no one to help me figure this out, ” he said. “People are just going to get frustrated and say no.”

The new renewal time frame has a precedent in California, which adopted a semiannual reporting requirement in 2003 for some enrollees that lasted about a decade. Though it was less cumbersome than the regular annual renewals, it nonetheless resulted in people dropping from the rolls, Senderling-McDonald said.

But the Cato Institute’s Cannon believes six-month renewals are reasonable. “The savings from removing ineligible people would justify the paperwork involved,” he said.