A trial has been scheduled by a federal judge for May 13 in a lawsuit concerning individuals who were removed from Florida’s Medicaid program following the conclusion of a federal public health emergency declared in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. U.S. District Judge Marcia Morales Howard from Jacksonville issued an order last week setting the trial date, as indicated by a court docket. Attorneys representing Medicaid beneficiaries brought a potential class-action lawsuit in August alleging that the state failed to adequately notify individuals before discontinuing their enrollment in the health care program. An amended version of the lawsuit was filed in January.
The lawsuit is based on the termination of the federal public health emergency last spring. Medicaid receives funding from both federal and state governments, and during the emergency, Washington agreed to increase its financial support for the program. However, this came with the condition that states would not remove individuals from the Medicaid rolls during the emergency. Florida’s Medicaid program saw a significant increase in beneficiaries from roughly 3.8 million in January 2020 to nearly 5.78 million in April 2023 partly because individuals who may not have qualified based on income levels were not dropped from the program.
Following the conclusion of the public health emergency, the state implemented an eligibility redetermination process, resulting in hundreds of thousands of people being removed from the program. Enrollment numbers as of February decreased to about 4.8 million, according to data available on the state Agency for Health Care Administration website.