Well, this is (probably) bad news for our low income count for next year

 On Tuesday, State House News Service reported that nearly 200,000 people have come off MassHealth in the past two months. And per SHNS, "Through the first 11 months of the eligibility redetermination campaign, the publicly funded health insurance system's caseload has dropped by nearly 358,000."

First, people need health insurance, and if any of this is people dropping off MassHealth because they can't be found or didn't return forms, then we don't know that they have health care: 

Most of the roughly 810,000 people who have left MassHealth since April 1, 2023 lost coverage for procedural reasons, according to state data. About 541,500 were disenrolled because they did not provide enough information for MassHealth to confirm whether they are eligible, and another 15,200 could not be reached by state officials. The remaining 259,400 Bay Staters were confirmed ineligible after a review.

Here's the additional education connection, though: If half a million people dropped off for lack of information, we don't know that they aren't eligible; they still may well be. 
If any of those are children, they now not only don't have health insurance: they no longer count as low income, unless they are on one of the other state programs that counts towards that.

This is exactly what MASC and MASS outlined before Ways and Means at the hearing earlier this year. And if I am following those numbers correctly, we have had more people drop off since October than we did prior to October, which means the hit on FY26 could be worse than that on FY25.

It isn't too early to worry about and advocate for fixes for FY26!