INDIANA – The USC Center for Health Journalism is offering a webinar on July 28 from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. that explores the impact of ‘What Happens When States Kick People Off Medicaid?’. Registration for the webinar can be found here.
The pandemic-era protections that kept states from bumping people off the health insurance program for low-income Americans have ended. States nationwide have started purging their Medicaid rolls, leading to sudden and potentially dire losses in coverage for vulnerable families. No state has moved quicker than Arkansas, where more than 217,000 have lost coverage since April.
In this webinar, we’ll look at how the loss of the pandemic’s Medicaid protections are impacting vulnerable families across the country, and take a close look at Arkansas, using the state as a bellwether for the broader trend of coverage losses now unfolding nationally. We’ll discuss what the sudden loss of public insurance means for families’ health, how groups are working to combat this policy reversal, and how reporters can tell this story in distinctly human terms.
The webinar will feature panelists: Megan Messerly, Keesa Smith, and Jennifer Tolbert.
 Megan Messerly is a health care reporter for Politico covering health politics and policy in the states. |  Keesa Smith is the executive director of the Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families. |  Jennifer Tolbert is director of State Health Reform and associate director with the Program on Medicaid and the Uninsured at Kaiser Family Foundation. |
