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Oregon has canceled plans to give incarcerated adults Medicaid coverage before their release—scuttling a program that the state had earlier argued would help ensure continuous health care for inmates as they reenter society.
The planned January start date for Oregon’s Reentry Health Care program had already been delayed, due to what the state said were changes at the federal level. But Oregon had indicated it still planned to pursue the program.
Then on Monday, Oct. 6, the Oregon Health Authority notified partner organizations that in fact the program would not be implemented at all. The state attributed the move to bandwidth limitations that have emerged as it works to comply with the new restrictions on Medicaid eligibility resulting from the “One Big Beautiful Bill.”
“OHA had planned to focus on systems changes for the OHP Reentry Health Care Program,” the state said in a letter to partner organizations. “However, OHA will now need to make systems changes to meet requirements outlined in H.R. 1 provisions.” These, it said, included implementing processes to verify Medicaid eligibility every six months and ensure Medicaid members in the state comply with work requirements.
Separately, the state says it still intends to comply with a Biden-era federal law tailored at providing Medicaid services to young people in particular who are transitioning out of incarceration. But the withdrawal of Oregon’s Reentry Health Care program means that a far broader range of incarcerated adults who would have received Medicaid coverage months before their release will no longer get that benefit.
The federal government had originally approved Oregon’s reentry program in July 2024, granting the state a “waiver,” a process whereby states apply to experiment with Medicaid dollars. The idea—versions of which have been floated in other states, too—was to put inmates on the Oregon Health Plan 90 days before their release from custody, an exemption to a federal law that generally prohibits incarcerated people from getting Medicaid.
The state argued that people getting out of prison often see their health care interrupted while they try to figure out insurance, affecting their ability to get things like medication and substance abuse treatment, and leading in turn to increased overdoses, visits to the emergency room, and recidivism.
In a written statement, OHA Medicaid Director Emma Sandoe called the decision to cancel the reentry program “difficult,” and attributed it to competing priorities under H.R.1. She said OHA would focus instead on providing Medicaid services to eligible young adults transitioning out of incarceration, “in line with federal requirements.”
As part of its waiver, the state had been approved to distribute $115 million in funds to partners that would help implement the Reenter Health Care Program. Some programs had already applied, the state noted in its letter, but given the change of plans, it will not be disbursing these grants after all.
