DSS has come out with their Medicaid numbers for April. https://dss.mo.gov/mis/clcounter/  TL;DR: numbers increased in every category after DSS lost its ability to disenroll people over paperwork issues. 1/

March-April, the "Persons with Disabilities" category increased by almost 10,000. Some, but probably not most, of these are Covid-19 patients, who can have Medicaid if they are low-income. We have just over 10,000 Covid diagnoses in Missouri as of May 12. 2/

March-April, the "Elderly" category increased by more than 2,000. That doesn't sound like a lot, but this number has not been as high as it is since before 2012. This growth is a significant increase over the growth it had seen in the past few months. 3/

March-April, the "Custodial Parents" category increased by 5,000. It was steadily declining until January and was creeping up earlier this year, but really jumped in April. 4/

March-April, the "Children" category increased by over 20,000 to nearly 553,000. Keep in mind that over 2 years, this category had declined by over 100,000 children. This brings the number of children enrolled in Medicaid in Missouri to where it was in March 2019. 5/

March-April, the "Pregnant Women" category increased by over 3,000. Where pregnancy is a status where you would expect to see a lot of churn, right now a person cannot be disenrolled postpartum (like they normally would) due to Covid legislation. 6/

Some of these increases are directly related to Covid. People have lost jobs, have lost income, and are needing welfare services more than they have. Food stamp families increased by 50,000 (16%) between March and April. 7/

I would wonder whether other states have seen the same kind of increases in the Medicaid rolls as Missouri? Has anyone done a comparison? cc: @GeorgetownCCF @KFF 8/end