As many as 5 million fewer Americans would lack health insurance if the 19 states that have not yet expanded their Medicaid programs chose to do so in 2017, according to a new report.
The report, produced by the Urban Institute with funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, says that Medicaid enrollment would increase by between 7.8 and 8.8 million if the remaining states expanded eligibility.
Medicaid expansion in Texas would drive the largest drop in the number of uninsured--1.3 million--followed by Florida and Georgia. Those three states would account for more than half of the potential gain in individuals eligible for Medicaid.
Groups who would see largest percent declines in the uninsured rate due to Medicaid expansion, with reductions of 34 percent to 45 percent, include non-Hispanic blacks, part-time workers, the unemployed and American Indians/Alaska natives. Adults without children and those with only a high school education also stand to see significant drops in the rate of uninsured.
If the remaining states do not expand Medicaid, nearly 7 million of their residents still have gained health insurance through the Affordable Care Act’s coverage expansions, the report notes. And lacking any policy changes, the number of uninsured people in these 19 states could be further reduced by additional enrollment in Medicaid or the marketplaces achieved through outreach efforts.
But even so, “our single greatest opportunity to cover more people would be to expand Medicaid in all 50 states,” the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Kathy Hempstead said in an emailed statement from the organization.
Federal health officials have made it a priority to push the remaining states to expand their Medicaid programs--a fact that President Barack Obama highlighted in a recent scholarly article outlining his hopes for the future of the ACA. The states that have expanded Medicaid have been able to reduce healthcare spending, a previous report noted--mainly due to a reduction in uncompensated care.
- read the report