Activists Continue Calling for Medicaid Changes in Arkansas, Alleging Unfair Coverage Losses

Organizers from Arkansas community organizations hold signs calling for better Medicaid coverage outside the Jefferson County Department of Human Services office in Pine Bluff on Tuesday. (Photo by Tess Vrbin/Arkansas Advocate)

Arkansas Medicaid beneficiaries and advocates repeated their consistent messages that the state Department of Human Services should provide broader Medicaid coverage and process applications more efficiently during a protest Tuesday outside the Jefferson County DHS office.

The Arkansas Community Organizations, which organized the protest, has consistently emphasized the benefits of the federally funded health insurance program and the challenges low-income Arkansans face when they can’t afford health care or get Medicaid quickly. On Tuesday, the organization added a new message: DHS employees are overworked and undersupported.

“When you walk into DHS, be prepared to take a number and sit there for a long time,” said William Gerard, a Medicaid recipient. “There may be two workers at four counters and not enough (support) to handle their caseload.”

Cathy Young of Pine Bluff and Be’Atte Martin of Little Rock both said they did not receive notification from DHS when the agency changed their Medicaid coverage plans.

Notifications may not reach people in the mail through no fault of their own, and sometimes DHS implements several changes before a Medicaid client is notified of the first, said Brainard Bivens, who worked in the Jefferson County DHS office from 1995 to 2017.

“They have to make an (eligibility) decision within a certain time frame, and often they can’t make a decision because of… what’s the chronic problem? ‘Not enough information. We haven’t received the information,'” Bivens said.

In 2023, DHS spent six months reviewing the eligibility of Medicaid beneficiaries whose coverage was extended for three years due to the COVID-19 pandemic, even though they were no longer eligible for benefits due to income or other eligibility limitations.

According to DHS data, more than 184,500 of the approximately 420,000 Arkansans who kept their coverage during the extension were disenrolled between April 1 and Sept. 30 because they failed to provide the necessary eligibility information.

Community organizations in Arkansas staged several protests last year, saying DHS didn’t do enough to ensure people were ineligible before reducing their Medicaid coverage. Most states had a full year to “wind down” coverage expansions, but Arkansas had six months, as required by a 2021 state law. State officials have defended the wind down process.

The most recent protest before Tuesday was in May outside DHS headquarters in Little Rock, in response to a Georgetown University report released earlier that month. Arkansas had the 10th-largest decline in the number of children enrolled in Medicaid by the end of 2023 compared to before the pandemic began in 2020, the report said.

Martin said Tuesday that she lost her coverage in August 2023 while she was still eligible, and then lost her Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) food benefits and her caregiver for her health issues.

She regained coverage for Medicaid but not SNAP, she said, and DHS has not received the 76 documents she submitted proving her eligibility for benefits.

Martin received SNAP and Medicaid in Oklahoma within a week of arriving there earlier this year, but she couldn’t find housing, she said, so she left in August so her children could return to school in Little Rock, and the family remains homeless.

“Now that I’m back in Arkansas, I have to go through all the hoops again with DHS to receive the benefits I’m entitled to,” Martin said.

Arkansas community organizations are planning two more protests in October, organizers Neil Sealy and Al Allen said.

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