Jennifer Barrios remembers receiving in May a yellow envelope with the red letters "Action Required" on it.
She logged into the Texas Medicaid benefits app, which the mother of three from Donna, near McAllen, uses to submit information and to check her children's Medicaid benefits.
She said the app read "no tasks needed." Her children's benefits were good through July 25.
In June, she took 4-year-old daughter Ashlyn to the dentist only to learn that her children no longer had Medicaid, effective June 1.
Barrios is one of almost 500,000 people in Texas who have lost Medicaid coverage for what the state calls "procedural" reasons. Sometimes they are dropped because they didn't fill out the form in the envelope within 30 days. In other cases, children have been categorized incorrectly and pregnant people have been dropped erroneously.
The American-Statesman asked public policy experts at Every Texan, the Children's Defense Fund, Texans Care for Children how to improve the process and emailed whistleblowers at the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, the state agency in charge of Medicaid and the reenrollment process.
The Statesman also emailed the state commission; talked to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the federal agency that oversees Medicaid; and U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, who with fellow congressional Democrats from Texas sent a letter to CMS asking for help to oversee Texas' process.
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