Surreal silver lining re. Medicaid unwinding? Some losing coverage may not have known they were covered to begin with

According to the latest estimates from KFF, over 20 million Americans have now had their Medicaid or CHIP healthcare coverage terminated since the post-public health emergency "unwinding" process began one year ago: At least 20,104,000 Medicaid enrollees have been disenrolled as of April 11, 2024, based on the most current data from all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Overall, 31% of people with a completed renewal were disenrolled in reporting states while 69%, or 43.6 million enrollees, had their coverage renewed (one reporting state does not include data on renewed enrollees). Due to varying lags for when states report data, the data reported here undercount the actual number of disenrollments to date. On the one hand, this is absolutely a crisis. On the other hand, while the numbers are still shockingly high (KFF themselves put their estimate at anywhere between 8 - 24 million who would lose coverage last April), it isn't quite as bad as the top line number suggests, for several reasons. For starters, at least 3.42 million of those who had their Medicaid/CHIP coverage terminated transferred over to heavily-subsidized ACA exchange plans instead as of the end of December. This is likely several hundred thousand higher today.