Federal guidelines require new Medicaid applications to be processed in under 45 days. The average turnaround time for Missouri’s new applicants is 70 days, according to a report from the state.
The delays are ten times longer than the national average time it takes to process applications, according to Kaiser Health News. The state blames the delays on labor shortages.
While the state has already processed 64,210 applications, nearly 73,000 were still pending in early February.
Other states have similarly struggled with backlogs of applications, including California, which was sued over having 900,000 unanswered applications.
