Texas kicked hundreds of seniors off Medicare benefits by mistake

State mistakes have removed needy seniors from Medicare benefits, putting some out of needed money for months.

AUSTIN (Nexstar) -- Texas Health and Human Services accidentally removed 350 seniors from the state's Medicare Savings Program, the agency confirmed, costing some lower income Texans as much $200 a month out of their Social Security checks.

Last summer, Nexstar first reported that about 100,000 Texans were improperly removed from Medicaid coverage after the federal government rolled back COVID-era provisions meant to protect people from losing health insurance.

On April 1, 2023, the Biden administration ended its “continuous coverage provision," which prevented states from unenrolling Medicaid recipients during the COVID-19 pandemic. That meant Texas needed to review its enrollees — about 6 million people — to determine which were still eligible for coverage. The sudden influx led to mistakes that kicked people off their coverage, compounded by alleged understaffing, technology errors, and a "toxic" environment reported by whistleblowers last summer.

Nearly a year later, the Texas HHSC confirmed seniors were also "erroneously removed" from the Medicare Savings Program.

"HHSC routinely performs quality assurance measures," HHSC's Tiffany Young told Nexstar. "When, through this process, the agency discovers a Medicaid recipient was terminated in error, HHSC works expeditiously to reinstate coverage for those impacted back to the date of their termination. Coverage has already been reinstated or is in the process of being reinstated for any impacted Medicare Savings Program recipients."

Other seniors who neglected to renew their Medicare Savings Program benefits last year have experienced prolonged wait times for their applications to be approved again.

For the last four months, Ed Heimlich desperately refreshed his online healthcare benefits homepage to daily disappointment. Each day without his benefits meant another day at the food pantry, scrapping to survive on a Social Security payment that was cut even slimmer after he lost the Medicare Savings Program.

"It came without any warning whatsoever," he said. "I found out that my benefits had been eliminated... it's just really a struggle."

Ed, a 69-year-old retiree in Austin, lives off $970 a month from Social Security. He is also enrolled in Medicare Part B, and about $174 was paid out of Texas' Medicare Savings Program. But when he was removed from that program in August, that $170 was deducted from his Social Security check, dropping his income to just $795 -- a nearly 20% reduction that amounts to a hefty toll for seniors already living on the edge.

"When your income is less than $1,000 a month, that is a lot. That hurts," he said. "18% of your income suddenly taken from you through no fault of your own, through a state bureaucratic error, a state system whose computer program didn't know how to handle the situation."

HHS said Heimlich's case was not related to the erroneous removals, but rather, Heimlich had neglected to renew his status and his removal was proper. Heimlich said he never received a renewal notice, and was told late last year that his removal was a "glitch."

On the same day Nexstar contacted HHS about Heimlich's case, Heimlich said he received two calls from the commission and they reinstated his benefits effective April 1. HHS reports the oldest application still awaiting review is 36 days old.