Alleging “ongoing and nationwide” errors and “unfair and deceptive trade practices,” the National Health Law Program, a nonprofit that advocates for people with low incomes, urged the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Deloitte in a complaint filed in January.

“Systems built by Deloitte have generated numerous errors, resulting in inaccurate Medicaid eligibility determinations and loss of Medicaid coverage for eligible individuals in many states,” it argued. “The repetition of the same errors in Deloitte eligibility systems across Texas and other states and over time demonstrates that Deloitte has failed.”

FTC spokesperson Juliana Gruenwald Henderson confirmed receipt of the complaint but did not comment further.

Smith called the allegations “without merit.”

The system problems are especially concerning as states wade through millions of Medicaid eligibility checks to disenroll people who no longer qualify — a removal process that was paused for three years to protect people from losing insurance during the covid-19 public health emergency. In that time, nationwide Medicaid enrollment grew by more than 22 million, to roughly 87 million people. At least 22.8 million have been removed as of June 4 , according to a KFF analysis of government data.

Advocates worry many lost coverage despite being eligible. A KFF survey of adults disenrolled from Medicaid during the first year of the unwinding found that nearly 1 in 4 adults who were removed are now uninsured. Nearly half who were removed were able to reenroll, the survey showed, suggesting they should not have been dropped in the first place.

“If there is a technology challenge or reason why someone can’t access health care that they're eligible for, and we're able to do something,” Smith said, “we work tirelessly to do so.”

Deloitte’s contracts with states regularly cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and the federal government pays the bulk of the cost.

“States become very dependent on the consultant for operating complex systems of all kinds” to do government business, said Michael Shaub, an accounting professor at Texas A&M University.

Georgia’s contract with Deloitte to build and maintain its system for health and social service programs, inked in 2014, as of January 2023 was worth $528 million. This January, state officials wrote in an assessment obtained by KFF Health News that its eligibility system “lacks flexibility and adaptability, limiting Georgia’s ability to serve its customers efficiently, improve the customer and worker experience across all programs, ensure data security, reduce benefit errors and fraud, and advance the state’s goal of streamlining eligibility.”

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