30K removed from Louisiana Medicaid rolls, deemed ineligible

BATON ROUGE, LA (AP) - More than 30,000 people in Louisiana have been booted from the Medicaid program.

A new state computer check combed through the rolls and determined they earn too much to receive the taxpayer-financed health insurance.

Louisiana’s health department sent notices to 40,000 Medicaid enrollees in February. The letters warned the Medicaid recipients they were slated to lose the insurance coverage unless they could demonstrate by March 29 that they met the program’s income requirements.

Agency spokesman Robert Johannessen says three-quarters of those who received the letters, 30,500 people, have lost their benefits. Nearly all of them are non-elderly adults enrolled through the Medicaid expansion program that Gov. John Bel Edwards enacted in 2016.

The new computer system does quarterly, rather than annual, eligibility checks and uses more wage data for comparison.