The Great Medicaid Purge begins this weekend.

Starting at midnight Saturday, the first of an expected 15 million people will be kicked off Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). At least five states — Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, New Hampshire, South Dakota — have said they will begin terminating coverage throughout the month of April.

Other states have said they will follow. The entire purge, which is completely legal, will take place over a year.

What’s behind this mass disenrollment?

The proximate cause might seem reasonable: The covid-19 public health emergency is no longer forcing states to retain every Medicaid enrollee already on the books.

Early in the pandemic, as a condition of receiving additional federal funding, states were temporarily barred from kicking anyone off Medicaid. This was intended to guarantee more people access to medical care while the coronavirus crisis was raging. Better to err on the side of […]