Trump Regime posts claimed March 2025 Medicaid/CHIP enrollment report: 78.6M, down 173K from January

The Musk/Trump Regime has published an update to the official Medicaid/CHIP enrollment data:

March 2025 Key Findings

Medicaid and CHIP Enrollment

• In March 2025, 78.6 million individuals were enrolled in Medicaid and CHIP.
• 71.3 million individuals were enrolled in Medicaid, and 7.3 million individuals were enrolled in CHIP.
• 41.2 million adults were enrolled in Medicaid, and there were 37.3 million Medicaid child and CHIP enrollees.

Medicaid and CHIP Applications Received

• In March 2025, Medicaid, CHIP, Human Services agencies, and State-based Marketplaces received 2.5 million applications, or 5 percent more applications, as compared to February 2025.
• The number of applications received has increased by 16 percent since March 2024 and increased by 54 percent since March 2023.

They actually released both February and March 2025 data at the same time, but since my last update was from January, I'll be comparing against that here:

Total Medicaid/CHIP enrollment in March 2025 of ~78.6 million dropped about 0.2% from January 2025, or by just over 173,000 people.

The all-time high enrollment watermark for Medicaid/CHIP was in April 2023, when it officially hit 94.1 million Americans (95.7 million when you include the U.S. territories).

It's important to note that CMS actually has two different reports on Medicaid enrollment: The monthly Medicaid & CHIP Enrollment Trend Snapshot (referenced above) and the Medicaid Budget & Expenditure System (MBES).

Each type of report measures Medicaid enrollment a bit differently:

• The MBES report is 12 months out of date (through June 2024) while the Trend Snapshot is only 3 months out of date (through March 2025).

• The MBES count includes individuals enrolled in limited benefit plans and the Performance Indicator count does not include such individuals.

• The MBES data represents the count of unduplicated individuals enrolled in the state’s Medicaid program at any time during each month in the quarterly reporting period, while the Performance Indicator data captures the count of individuals enrolled on the last day of the month.

• The MBES count only includes individuals whose coverage is funded through Medicaid (title XIX of the Social Security Act), while the published Performance Indicator also includes individuals funded through CHIP (title XXI of the SSA).

• MBES and Performance Indicator data may be derived from different state systems.

• Retroactive state adjustments to MBES or Performance Indicator data may be in progress.

• States have likely generated MBES data and Performance Indicator data from state systems on different dates.

• The other major difference: The MBES reports include Medicaid enrollees in the U.S. territories: American Samoa, Guam, N. Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

The MBES numbers for U.S. territories stood at 1.54 million Medicaid enrollees as of June 2024. If you add those to the Trend Snapshot total for the 50 states +DC, it comes in at 80.3 million as of December 2024.

It's also worth noting that ACA Medicaid Expansion enrollment specifically  was 20.9 million as of June 2024 according to the MBES report, down around 3 million from the all-time high it reached in May 2023.

Finally, the summary report mentions in passing that ACA exchange enrollment in Qualified Health Plans (QHPs) was ~23.6 million in January, while Basic Health Plan (BHP) enrollment was 1.8 million.

The 23.6 million figure is noteworthy since it means net attrition of exchange enrollment is only 2.9% vs. the ~24.3 million who selected exchange QHPs during the 2025 Open Enrollment Period.

It's also noteworthy that these numbers are being officially recognized by the Musk/Trump admin under the circumstances.

As for my concerns about potential manipulation of data by the Musk/Trump Admin, once again I'm still not seeing any obvious red flags in this month's report.

Total Medicaid/CHIP enrollment is reported as being down slightly, but not by a crazy amount (around 0.2% nationally from Jan - Mar). 

At the state level, 8 states saw a drop of more than 1% (Alaska had the highest drop at 3.5%)...while 3 states (Utah, Arkansas & Rhode Island) had increases of more than 1%, although Rhode Island's is a special case as their data was previously unavailable since October due to a massive data security breach.

Again, I'll continue to keep a close eye on this, but it doesn't look like Musk/Trump's CMS are messing with this data as of yet.

Unfortunately, given all the attention/focus there's been on ACA Medicaid expansion enrollees lately, that data is still only updated through June 2024 as of this writing, a solid year out of date.