Study: Texts, Calls Cut Medicaid Renewal Failures
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- States must begin notifying Medicaid enrollees in September about upcoming changes, including twice-yearly eligibility checks and work requirements starting in 2027.
- One Big Beautiful Bill Act of 2025 mandates states use at least two outreach methods to inform affected enrollees, though specific methods are left to state discretion.
- Rebecca Myerson, Allison Espeseth, and Laura Dague found that supplementing written outreach with prerecorded calls increased Medicaid renewal rates by 1 percentage point and reduced procedural denials.
- Text messages were as effective as postcards in renewing coverage but cost significantly less—9 cents versus 38 cents per contact—making them a more cost-effective outreach tool.
- Prerecorded calls offering navigator assistance boosted renewal by 1.7 percentage points for those who received them and reduced procedural denials by 1.8 points, despite delivery challenges.
- Covering Wisconsin partnered with researchers to test outreach methods, demonstrating that tech-enabled navigator support can prevent avoidable coverage losses among vulnerable groups.
Why it matters: With 1 in 5 Medicaid enrollees having outdated contact info, relying on a single outreach method risks disenrolling eligible people—especially tribal members, children, and those with chronic conditions. Supplementing mail with texts and calls could save hundreds of thousands of renewals at low cost, even after a 90% funding cut to navigator programs.
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