Hundreds of thousands of American children have been removed from a health care plan in Florida in just over two years, according to data from KFF, a nonprofit health policy research and news organization.
About 700,000 children were disenrolled from Medicaid in the state as part of the unwinding process happening nationwide after Medicaid coverage was expanded following the COVID-19 pandemic.
Newsweek has contacted the Florida Department of Children and Families via email for comment.
Why It Matters
The growing number of uninsured children and adults in America is of great concern to many experts and lawmakers, who argue the rise will intensify pressure on emergency departments, increase costs long term and worsen health outcomes nationwide.
As children are also particularly reliant on Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), as new research has shown, it means that losing access to Medicaid could leave many without health insurance, harming their health and potentially affecting their education, which could have future implications.
What To Know
During the COVID-19 pandemic, U.S. states expanded Medicaid coverage under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), triggering a rise in enrollment levels nationwide. States were mandated to keep most Medicaid enrollees in the program, even if their eligibility status changed, until March 2023.
At that stage, states could then start rolling recipients off the program, which has resulted in significant reductions in enrollment figures across the country over the last two years.
In Florida, there were 3,094,306 children covered by Medicaid in March 2023, before the unwinding process began. By June 2025, that number was 2,391,614, KFF data shows.
This marks a change of about 700,000, a decline of nearly one quarter of enrollees, which marks one of the steepest drops in child Medicaid enrollment across all states, behind Texas, Utah, Montana, Missouri and Alaska.
While some of these children may have access to other forms of health insurance—such as employer-sponsored health plans through their parents’ jobs—U.S. Census data shows the rate of uninsured children has increased by a half million since the unwinding process began, the highest figure in more than a decade, Tricia Brooks, professor at the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families, told Newsweek.
She added that trend will “likely continue,” as the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that over 11 million people will lose Medicaid as various aspects of President Donald Trump’s sweeping tax package, known as HR 1 or the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, are implemented.
States are also unwinding recipients at varying degrees, as the program is administered in states with “lots of flexibility within federal parameters,” Brooks said.
The policy and administrative choices states make “determine the level of red tape that families encounter in retaining coverage,” she said, meaning that fewer children and parents lost coverage in states that “put in the hard work to automate the redetermination process using reliable data, such as wage data, to verify ongoing eligibility.”
Also, “the extent to which states conducted multi-faceted communications campaigns, including social and news media, and engaged community partners in conducting outreach and assisting enrollees also had an impact on a state’s outcomes,” Brooks added.
What People Are Saying
Brooks also told Newsweek: “While most children likely remained eligible, their families got tripped up in red tape, confusing notices, and the inability to access personalized assistance. For example, some states had call waiting times of hours, not minutes. If people are confused about the action they must take, they often lose coverage for ‘procedural reasons’ not because they were no longer eligible.
“Children need health coverage to access the preventive and routine services they need to grow up healthy. Health insurance is particularly critical in a child’s early years when they need regular screenings to ensure they are on track developmentally. Development delays, such as hearing loss, can be resolved before a child enters schools so they don’t fall behind. There is a large body of empirical evidence that children who are covered by Medicaid during childhood miss fewer school days, perform better in school, are more likely to graduate high school and pursue higher education or advanced training, and earn more as adults – helping to break the cycle of poverty.”
What Happens Next
As the Medicaid unwinding process continues, more reductions in enrollment are expected in Florida and across the country.
