Rural children and families are having to skip vital health treatments and even ending up in the emergency room, while already struggling rural clinics are losing more patients, as states cull their Medicaid rolls. The process began in April 2023, when pandemic-era rules that prohibited kicking people off Medicaid coverage expired and states again began checking whether families met income restrictions. Nationally, nearly 70% of people who lost coverage did so for “procedural” reasons such as incomplete paperwork. States with the largest drops in coverage also have large rural populations. Read More