Montana

Procedural barriers complicate Medicaid enrollment for the unhoused

Published

2 years ago

February 28, 2024

Procedural barriers complicate Medicaid enrollment for the unhoused

On a cold February morning at the Flathead Warming Center in Kalispell, shelter guests got ready for the day, eating breakfast, or figuring out if the bus was running on time.

Tashya Evans was in the parking lot smoking a cigarette while she waited for help with her Medicaid application.

Evans is one of about 120,000 Montanans who lost Medicaid as the state re-evaluated everyone’s eligibility. That number is still growing as the state releases more data.

About two-thirds of those who were kicked off state Medicaid rolls lost it for technical reasons like incorrectly filling out paperwork. That’s one of the highest procedural disenrollment rates nationwide, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation analysis.

Even unsheltered people like Evans, who still qualify, are losing their health insurance. That’s despite the state saying publicly it would use datasets like social security and disability to automatically renew people who likely still qualify for Medicaid.

Evans said she lost coverage in September because she didn’t receive paperwork as she moved from Great Falls.

That’s forcing her to forgo her blood pressure medication and pause dental work. She thinks her blood pressure has been ok, but waiting for the dentist has been hard.

“The teeth broke off. My gums hurt. There’s sometimes where I’m not feeling good and I don’t want to eat,” she said.

She sat down in a spare shelter office with an application counselor from Greater Valley Health Clinic, which serves much of the homeless population in the Flathead Valley.

Evans recounted all the struggles she’s had.

She tried asking for help at the local state public assistance office. She said staff there don’t have time to answer all her questions about which forms she needs to fill out or walk through the paperwork with her. She tried the state help line, but she couldn’t get through.

“You just get to the point where you’re like, ‘I’m frustrated right now. I have other things that are more important, so let’s not deal with it,’” she said.

Evans said she needs to spend her time looking for a job, finding her next meal and a place to sleep. Sitting on the phone most of the day isn’t feasible.

There’s no public data on how many unhoused people in Montana, or nationwide, have lost Medicaid, but homeless service providers and experts say it’s a big problem.

Montana health officials said they provided training to prepare homeless service providers.

State health department Director Charlie Brereton also resisted calls from Democratic state lawmakers to pause the redetermination process.

“I’m confident in our redetermination process,” Brereton told lawmakers. “I do believe that many of the Medicaid members who’ve been disenrolled were disenrolled correctly.”

Redetermination went on as planned, ending in January, four months ahead of the federal deadline.

Those helping unsheltered people who have lost coverage said they have spent much of their time trying to help people get in touch with the state Medicaid office to provide them with the correct information.

Sorting through paperwork mistakes has also been a headache, said Crystal Baker, a case manager at HRDC, the homeless shelter in Bozeman.

“We’re getting mail that’s like, ‘Oh, this needs to be turned in by this date,’ and that’s already two weeks past. So, now we have to start the process all over again. Now, they have to wait two to three months without insurance,” she said.

Federal health officials warned Montana and other conservative states that have been unenrolling high rates of people for technicalities. The agency also warned states for having unreasonable barriers to accessing assistance, such as long hold times on help lines. CMS said that it could force states to halt their process, but so far hasn’t done so.

However, experts said blue states are also kicking homeless people off their rolls and that the redetermination has been chaotic everywhere. Because of the barriers unsheltered people face, it’s easy for them to fall through the cracks.

“It doesn’t seem like such a big deal to fill out paperwork,” said Dr. Margot Kushel, a primary care provider and a homeless researcher at the University of California, San Francisco. “Put yourself in the position of an elder who’s experiencing homelessness and has lost their vision, who has no access to [a] computer, no access to [a] car, doesn’t have [a] cell phone.”

People can typically get retroactive coverage if they get back on Medicaid after they are kicked off.

Kushel said being without Medicaid for any period can be dangerous for the homeless community, which has high rates of chronic health conditions.

“Being out of your asthma medicine for three days can be life threatening. If you have high blood pressure and you suddenly stop your medicine, your blood pressure shoots up, and your risk of having a heart attack goes way up,” she said.

When people don’t understand why they’re losing coverage or how to get it back, that erodes their trust in the medical system, said Kushel.

Evans, who was able to get help with her application, is likely to regain coverage.

Providers on the ground said it could take years to get everyone who lost coverage back on Medicaid. They worry that those who go without coverage will resort to using the emergency room rather than managing their health conditions proactively.

Baker, the case manager at the Bozeman shelter, set up several call-backs from the state for one client. The state needed to interview him to make sure he still qualified, but the state never called back.

“He waited all-day long. It was so stressful for him that he just gave up,” she said.

That client ended up leaving the Bozeman area before she could convince him it was worth trying to regain Medicaid.

Baker worries his health will catch up with him before he decides to reapply to Medicaid.

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Montana

Strong wind in the forecast statewide

Published

11 hours ago

December 17, 2025

Press Room

Nick Vertz suspected calm weather wouldn’t soon return after last week’s high-speed wind event that recorded 101-mph winds in Glacier County. The Billings-based National Weather Service forecaster said Montanans should expect exceptionally strong gusts Tuesday night and Wednesday.

“I joke that the weather’s just playing catch up with how mild of a fall and start to the winter we had,” Vertz told Montana Free Press on Tuesday.

Nearly the entire state is under an official high-wind warning, meaning the weather service expects wind speeds of 58 mph or greater. While the official warning status may vary by region, the weather service anticipates the strong winds will move west to east through late Wednesday evening.

The National Weather Service hazard forecast covered the state in a high wind warning at 5:30 on Tuesday. Credit: Courtesy National Weather Service

Winds aloft, higher altitude gusts that generally exceed wind speeds on the surface, are both unusually powerful and relatively low in altitude. Vertz says high-speed winds aloft blowing downward is the result of warm weather.

“You can think of it as pushing those strong winds aloft down to reach the surface,” Vertz said.

Though much of Montana experienced a similar strong-wind pattern last week, Vertz said this system is a statewide event and that the weather service has “more confidence in those stronger winds to occur just all across the board.”

With gusts coming out of the northwest, Vertz advised caution for drivers headed north or south, who would likely experience the “full brunt of those crosswinds.”

Montana’s most recent experience with a major wind event on a similar scale occurred in January 2021, according to Vertz.

Ongoing flooding in northwest Montana makes the area particularly vulnerable to high-wind hazards, like saturated soil around tree roots, according to Bryan Conlan, a weather service meteorologist based out of Missoula.

“Anywhere within western Montana at this point, with these strong to damaging winds, trees could blow over,” Conlan said.

Gov. Greg Gianforte on Wednesday requested President Donald Trump issue a presidential disaster declaration in response to the flooding in the northwest part of the state.

As even more ocean moisture makes its way from the Pacific Northwest into Montana via “atmospheric rivers,” precipitation is likely to continue in western Montana.

“One of the differences between this and the prior system is there will be a very strong cold front that’ll be coming along,” Conlan said.

A cold front on Wednesday will mix with moisture from the atmospheric river, producing a combination of rain and snow. Cold air also leads to winds aloft descending, resulting in strong wind across high elevations in western Montana. On Monday night, winds in Glacier National Park reached almost 100 mph.

“This is going to be a fairly strong event,” Conlan said.

Nora Mabie contributed to this reporting.

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Montana

Montana Morning Headlines: Tuesday, December 16, 2025

Published

23 hours ago

December 16, 2025

Press Room

WESTERN MONTANA — Here’s a look at Western Montana’s top news stories for Tuesday.

The Flathead County Sheriff’s Office reports the suspect in last Thursday’s attempted kidnapping at a Kalispell gas station has been identified and arrested. The incident occurred at Woody’s gas station at Highways 35 and 206, where a man allegedly attempted to rob and kidnap a woman sitting in her car. (Read the full story)

Flathead County attempted kidnapping suspect in custody

The Bureau of Land Management is offering $1 permits for people to cut their own Christmas trees on public land, with options including Douglas fir, lodgepole pine and western larch. Harvesters must stay at least a quarter-mile from roads and rivers, with BLM encouraging people to target overcrowded areas where thinning would benefit forest management. (Read the full story)

Bureau of Land Management offering $1 Christmas tree permits

Two reindeer from a farm in Washington brought Christmas magic to Murdoch’s Ranch & Home Supply in Missoula on Dec. 6, featuring 10-year-old Candy and 1.5-year-old Elsa posing for photos and meeting dozens of families. The reindeer, raised by Jordan Duncan at Reindeer Express near Spokane, spend their off-season splashing in water and munching grass before returning to holiday duties. (Read the full story)

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Montana

Montana-Montana State’s FCS semifinal get-in ticket prices surpass College Football Playoff games

Published

1 day ago

December 16, 2025

Press Room

Montana-Montana State’s FCS semifinal get-in ticket prices surpass College Football Playoff games

Montana-Montana State, known as the Brawl of the Wild, is one of the best rivalries in FCS. This year, more than bragging rights are on the line, as the matchup will take place in the FCS semifinals.

The high stakes and relatively smaller seating capacity have made this game the most expensive entry-level ticket in college football this weekend, including the first round of the College Football Playoff.

The cheapest ticket for the game at Bobcat Stadium in Bozeman, Montana, is $675 on Gametime Tickets compared to about $350 for the Miami at Texas A&M game, which is the most expensive of the four first-round College Football Playoff matchups. The most expensive ticket for the FCS semifinal is a sideline seat priced at $1,152. The Miami-Texas A&M game has Founder Club tickets listed at $2,484.

The seating capacity for Bobcat Stadium is 20,767, compared to more than 102,000 at Texas A&M’s Kyle Field. The other three CFP games this weekend will be hosted by Oklahoma (capacity 80,126), Ole Miss (64,038) and Oregon (60,000).

Next year’s Montana-Montana State matchup starts at $876, with some tickets listed as high as $1,359.

Montana State is the No. 2 seed in the playoffs at 12-2 after defeating Stephen F. Austin 44-28 in the quarterfinals this past weekend. Third-seeded Montana is 13-1 and beat South Dakota 52-22 in its quarterfinal. Montana leads the all-time rivalry 74-44-5.

Montana State has won the last two matchups between the teams, most recently winning 31-28 at Montana on Nov. 22. At least one of the teams has appeared in the FCS championship game in three of the past four years. Montana’s last national championship came in 2001, while Montana State’s came in 1984.

Montana is led by head coach Bobby Hauck, who is the second-winningest active FCS head coach and one of the top 10 winningest active coaches overall in Division I football at 151-42. Montana’s key players are quarterback Keali’i Ah Yat, running back Eli Gillman and wide receiver Michael Wortham.

Montana State is led by head coach Brent Vigen. Key players for Montana State include quarterback Justin Lamson, running back Julius Davis and wide receiver Taco Dowler.

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