For more than a decade, The Commonwealth Fund and other organizations have been studying the prevalence and impact of repeatedly gaining and losing health insurance coverage—a phenomenon known as churning. A new blog post by The Commonwealth Fund's Susan Hayes and Cathy Schoen looks at how minor fluctuations in family income, pregnancy, and other life changes, or failure to file paperwork required to prove eligibility for public insurance, can mean the difference between having coverage or not.
The authors also explore potential solutions, such as recent bipartisan federal legislation calling for 12-month continuous enrollment in Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program.