Survey finds Americans unaware about new healthcare requirements

Our time now, 7-14, about 14 million Californians rely on Medi-Cal for their health coverage. Some of them will face new federal Medicaid work requirements beginning in January. Thank Aeroflow is a health care company that released a new survey that finds nearly half of all Medicaid members are not prepared to submit needed documentation. you The company also showed that more than a third of them are unaware of the requirement. changes entirely. Joining us to break down the survey very and examine health care in America is CEO of Aeroflow, Casey Hite. Welcome, Casey. much. Thank you. How are you? I'm doing well. Thank you so much. So let's start here. What are the most notable findings of the survey that your company undertook here? Well, primarily that 44% of folks that have Medicaid are not aware of these requirements and over 60% are not prepared to get in line with those requirements. So tell us what kind of health care Medicaid changes and requirements we will see next year. Well, so starting on January 1st, the plan is that certain folks that don't meet medical frailty requirements that are defined by the federal government are going to have to prove that they meet work requirements, which could mean that they're working over 80 hours a month. So, you know, that's that could be a lot of folks who could lose their coverage. Our biggest concern is that folks don't know what's coming and the Medicaid programs don't have the right address or right contact information. If there's one thing that I could stress with folks that are that who have insurance through Medicaid is when something shows up with the mail that looks like junk mail, make sure you open it and make sure you reach out to your case manager and your Medicaid plan. You know, Casey, exit polls from the midterm election showed health care is a major issue on the minds of so many Americans. So why do so many people, why are they unaware or unprepared for these changing requirements? Well, unfortunately, a lot of the Medicaid programs use older communication methods, like mail, oftentimes not using the phone, email, or text messages. And oftentimes, again, the contact information they have with folks is often stale and inaccurate. So we encourage folks, number one, open your mail. Email number two. Reach out. Reach out to your Medicaid program and confirm whether or not those requirements apply to you and what you need to do if they do apply to you. What's the impact here of this falling through the cracks here, people not being covered? I mean, have you studied how many people could be impacted by changes that they're unaware of that could impact their health coverage? We don't know the data. We haven't done a study on that yet. I can tell you that the single most important thing in folks' life is their health care. And so, you know, folks need access to it. We need to expand access. So, again, critical that folks open their mail, critical that they reach out to their local Medicaid plans. So for the viewer who is worried right now about their coverage, what can they do at this particular point here to make sure that they're looking? I know you said check your mail if it looks like junk mail, but what other ideas out there? I just want to put as many ideas out there as possible to people so they make sure they're not going to be lapsing coverage here. I would go as far as checking your spam filter on your email. If you have spam on your phone for text messages, make sure you're checking that. Open the mail, but even more so, just reach out directly to your Medicaid plan and find out if these requirements are going to apply to you. The last thing we want to see people do is lose their coverage. Even a small lapse in coverage can be dire to somebody that's suffering from a medical frailty. Exactly, and that's the only way they can afford to get their medical issues taken care of is through this plan here. Our Casey Hyde, CEO of a health care technology company, Aeroflow, thank you so much for joining us this morning and providing your insight. Thank you. Thank you. 7:18 this morning.