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Elder Law Prof Blog
Katherine C. Pearson, Editor, and a Member of the Law Professor Blogs Network on LexBlog.com

New Report on Medicaid Expansion & Affordable Care Act

By rmorgan

Kaiser Family Foundation has released a December, 2013 Issue Brief that looks at the impact on minorities who are in one of the states not expanding Medicaid under the ACA. The Impact of the Coverage Gap in States Not Expanding Medicaid by Race and Ethnicity looks at those who will be uninsured.  The summary of the findings:

  • [s]ignificant racial and ethnic disparities [exist] in health coverage among adults. Overall, among adults, people of color are more likely to be uninsured than Whites (27% vs. 15%), with Hispanics at the highest risk of lacking coverage (33%).

  • Medicaid expansion offers a particularly important opportunity to increase health coverage among people of color. Overall, more than half (53%) of uninsured adult people of color have incomes at or below the Medicaid expansion limit.

  • [I]n states that do not expand Medicaid, millions of poor adults will be left without a new coverage option, particularly poor uninsured Black adults residing in the South, where most states are not moving forward with the expansion. Four in ten uninsured Blacks with incomes low enough to qualify for the Medicaid expansion fall into the gap, compared to 24% of uninsured Hispanics and 29% of uninsured Whites. These continued coverage gaps will likely lead to widening racial and ethnic as well as geographic disparities in coverage and access.

The report estimates that 5,000,000 adults without insurance in those non-expansion states will probably remain without insurance.  Although they would have qualified for Medicaid under ACA expansion, they are too poor to purchase coverage in the Marketplace. A pdf of the report is available here.