There are some things that people age 65 and older really need to pay attention to. One of those things is how you select your healthcare insurance. John Toner, from the City of Philadelphia Department of Public Health, was a guest on one of my recent radio programs at WWDB/AM. Here’s some of what John Toner shared. He brought information about the changes to the Medicaid program now that the public health emergency is officially over (the pandemic). This is an important issue.
On May 11, the public health emergency due to covid ended. It was originally declared in January 2020 and did a couple of things to enable the Federal government to quickly spend and distribute funds during the covid pandemic. One of those things was changes to Medicaid. Before covid, if you were on Medicaid you would apply, and each year, you would have to reapply to continue to verify your eligibility. During the public health emergency, however, they switched to what they called a continuous enrollment model. What this did was no one had to reapply. The Federal government realized it would not be a good idea to have people lose health insurance during the pandemic.”
John Toner went on to add, “That was a really good thing, but now that the pandemic is winding down and the emergency has been declared over, everyone has to begin reapplying again. This may be a change for some people who had previously gotten on Medicaid during the pandemic and never had to go through the reapplication process, or even for those that had it before covid and just haven’t had to reapply n a few years. They might not remember. Things change. We’re trying to get the word out there and spread the information so that everybody knows you do have to go through this application process.
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