The Impact of the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency Expiration on All Types of Health Coverage

Matthew Buettgens and Andrew Green
December 2022
PDF
Type
Report
Publication
Urban Institute

Summary:

In this report, we update our earlier projections of Medicaid enrollment after the expiration of the COVID-19 public health emergency. We also go further to show what would happen to people disenrolling from Medicaid and whether they take up other types of coverage.

We estimate that if the PHE expires in April 2023, 18.0 million people will lose Medicaid coverage in the following 14 months. Of those 18.0 million people,

  • About 3.2 million children are estimated to transition from Medicaid to separate Children’s Health Insurance Programs, so total Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program enrollment will decline by 14.8 million people;
  • About 3.8 million people will become uninsured;
  • About 9.5 million people will either newly enroll in employer-sponsored insurance after losing Medicaid or transition to employer-sponsored insurance as their only source of coverage after being enrolled in both employer-sponsored insurance and Medicaid sometime during the PHE;
  • And more than 1 million people will enroll in the nongroup market, most of whom will be eligible for premium tax credits in the Marketplace.

Further extensions of the PHE are possible. If it is extended for an additional 90 days, we estimate that the number of people losing Medicaid will rise to nearly 19 million.


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