DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS: HOW MUCH DISENROLLMENT AND WHY?
Figure 1 presents the descriptive statistics on disenrollment. Of the 5,551 children in the sample, who all reported being in Medicaid or CHIP in Year 1 of the survey, 27.7 percent were no longer in either program 12 months later. This figure is comparable to previous estimates in the literature. Why did these children disenroll? Figure 1 shows that, of those who left public coverage, 38.8 percent acquired other health insurance (almost all of which was private coverage), 3.9 percent became ineligible for CHIP and Medicaid, and 11.9 percent both acquired new insurance and became ineligible. The remaining 45.4 percent lost Medicaid and CHIP coverage despite remaining eligible and having no other insurance. Defining only this last group as “drop-out”—the result most troubling from a policy perspective—we are left with an annual 12.6 percent drop-out rate among children in public insurance programs (95 percent CI=11.1–14.0 percent). Given current Medicaid enrollment, this corresponds to 3
