CMS: Total Medicaid, CHIP enrollment down 3.7 percent since 2017 peak
Nearly 72.4 million people were enrolled in Medicaid or the Children鈥檚 Health Insurance Program in January, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services last week. That鈥檚 3.7 percent fewer than the peak in March 2017, CMS Administrator Seema Verma , adding that the agency is conducting further analysis to better understand what is driving the trend. 鈥淚t鈥檚 always been clear that as the economy improves, unemployment drops and incomes grow, people move off of public assistance programs like Medicaid,鈥 she said. 鈥淲e鈥檙e exploring factors like the economy, as well as systems issues, data quality and reporting, and shifts in population patterns.鈥 According to an released last week by the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families, the number of children enrolled in Medicaid or CHIP fell by more than 840,000 in 2018.