Federal officials are raising concerns that long call center wait times may be contributing to a surge in the number of people losing Medicaid health care coverage.
Well over 4 million people have been dropped from Medicaid rolls nationwide since a pandemic-era moratorium on removing people ended this spring. All states are now working through a backlog of eligibility determinations. That's prompted an influx of calls to state Medicaid help centers.
The federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services sent letters to 16 states, including Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, expressing concerns that long call center wait times and hang up rates are impeding people's ability to renew Medicaid coverage. Among those states, the average call center wait time was 25 minutes and the average hang-up rate was 29%. That's significantly higher than the rest of the states, where the average call wait was less than 3 minutes and the average hang-up rate was less than 6%.
Nearly one-third of the states have received warnings from federal Medicaid officials that their lengthy call center wait times may be causing people to hang up — and give up — as they attempt to renew Medicaid coverage amid a massive nationwide effort to clean up the rolls of the government health insurance program for lower-income residents.
Some advocates have offered to function like placeholders in a long line for concert or sports tickets — waiting on hold so Medicaid recipients can do other things.
Utah had an average call center wait time of 35 minutes in May, with one in four callers simply hanging up, according to the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
According to the most recent CMS data, the longest wait time was in Missouri, at 48 minutes, though state officials say that figure is misleading. In Nevada, more than half the callers abandoned their calls.