500,000 Texans have been dropped from the Medicaid rolls since April

Half a million Texans have lost their Medicaid coverage since April, mostly for procedural reasons like not responding to messages from the state.

Preliminary data, released Friday by the state’s Health and Human Services Commission, paints a grim picture of Texas’ early efforts to redetermine Medicaid eligibility for the first time since COVID-19 hit three years ago.

Nowhere was this “unwinding” going to be easy. But Texas — with its high uninsured rates, strict rules to qualify for Medicaid and persistent delays in verifying eligibility — was on particularly poor footing...