• Posted May 12, 2025

Medicaid 'Unwinding' Cost Kids Access To Asthma Inhalers, Other Chronic Disease Meds

MONDAY, May 12, 2025 (HealthDay News) — Children and young adults formerly covered by Medicaid are losing access to medications needed to control conditions like depression, schizophrenia, ADHD, asthma and epilepsy, a new study says.

Young people need to take these meds regularly to get the best results, as interruptions can cause flare-ups of their chronic health problems, researchers said.

Interruptions in these meds are occurring more often in states that have experienced the biggest drops in Medicaid enrollment during the “unwinding” process that started after the end of the COVID pandemic, researchers reported recently in the journal Pediatrics.

The unwinding brought an end to Medicaid eligibility rules put in place during the pandemic.

For example, children and teens who use asthma inhalers were more likely to decrease use of their meds if they lived in a state with the largest drops in Medicaid enrollment, results show.

“Our findings suggest that the rapid disenrollment of young people from Medicaid during the unwinding process resulted in the disruption of chronic disease therapy,” lead researcher Dr. Kao-Ping Chua, a pediatrician and health care researcher at the University of Michigan Medical School and School of Public Health, said in a news release.

“As policymakers debate whether to enact drastic cuts to Medicaid funding, they should consider the possibility that doing so could similarly disrupt chronic disease therapy for children and young adults, placing them at higher risk for disease exacerbations and absenteeism from school and work,” Chua continued.

During the pandemic, the federal government prevented states from taking people off Medicaid rolls, researchers said in background notes.

As a result, Medicaid enrollment reached 94 million people by March 2023, an increase of 23 million from February 2020, researchers said.

Following the health emergency, states began going through their rolls to remove people who no longer met requirements for the low-income public insurance program.

As of September 2024, about 25 million adults and children had lost coverage due to this “Medicaid unwinding,” researchers said.

For the study, researchers analyzed data from a national prescription database that captures 92% of scrips filled by U.S. pharmacies. The data covered the years 2017 to 2023, and researchers looked for prescriptions for drugs that treat depression, schizophrenia, ADHD, asthma and epilepsy.

They compared that information to data reflecting changes in child enrollment in public insurance programs from just before the start of the unwinding to the end of 2023.

States with the largest drops in child Medicaid enrollment — 17% or more — included Arkansas, Georgia, Iowa, Idaho, Kansas, Montana, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Wisconsin and West Virginia, researchers found.

The smallest drops, 4% or less, were in California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Kentucky, Maryland, Maine, North Carolina, Nevada, New York, Rhode Island and Tennessee, as well as the District of Columbia.

Young adults taking any of the five classes of chronic disease medications were more likely to stop filling their prescriptions if they lived in a state with a large drop in Medicaid enrollment, results show.

Further, children and young adults were both more likely to need cash or private insurance to keep taking prescribed medications if they lived in a state with higher drops in Medicaid enrollment, researchers said.

“Medicaid unwinding disrupted chronic medication therapy among children and young adults, particularly the latter,” researchers concluded in their report.

However, more research is needed to show whether these drug disruptions caused worse symptoms among these kids and young adults, researchers said.

More information

The American Academy of Pediatrics has more on chronic illnesses among children.

SOURCES: Pediatrics, May 20, 2025; University of Michigan, news release, April 30, 2025

What This Means For You

Parents and young adults should talk to an insurance navigator about options for medication coverage for chronic conditions.