HHS: 6.3M Deemed Eligible for CHIP, Medicaid Since Exchanges Launched

More than 6.3 million Americans were deemed eligible for Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program between October and December, according to a Reuters report.

HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius discussed the Medicaid numbers at the winter meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors in Washington, D.C., according to the report. Matt Salo, executive director of the National Association of Medicaid Directors, told Reuters the number of people deemed eligible includes some who were eligible but didn't know they qualified and hadn't enrolled before many states expanded their Medicaid programs under the reform law.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act gave states the option of expanding their Medicaid programs this year to cover adults earning as much as 138 percent of the federal poverty level. Twenty-five states and Washington, D.C., opted to expand their programs, while two others are seeking to move forward with expansion after 2014.

In December alone, 2.3 million people were deemed eligible for Medicaid or CHIP, up 20 percent from November, according to the report. Approximately 1.2 million of those people are in D.C. and the states that have expanded their programs, while 1 million were in the states that haven't moved forward with expansion.

Earlier this month, The Washington Post reported technical issues with HealthCare.gov have kept thousands of people deemed eligible for Medicaid and CHIP from actually enrolling. The Obama administration was advising those affected to start over with their states' Medicaid agencies, and CMS was working with the states to fix problems with the automatic transfer of enrollee information from the federal exchange site to the states, according to the report.

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