15M uninsured individuals eligible for Medicaid or subsidized coverage
The report comes three weeks before millions of Americans can begin signing up for health insurance coverage under the Affordable Care Act.
“What you can see from this analysis is that of the people who are still uninsured in the United States, roughly half of them are eligible for a few sort of financial assistance to help them get health insurance”. “Others report that they found coverage to be too expensive, even with the availability of financial assistance”. The analysis, based on government data, found that as of early 2015, Texas, California, and Florida had the most uninsured, in that order.
According to The New York Times, as of June the marketplaces had lost about 15 percent of the members they had at the end of open enrollment in February.
· Could get free coverage under existing state Medicaid income guidelines but have not enrolled, 306,000 (11%). Under rules in place before the ACA, all states already extended public coverage to poor and low-income children, with a median income eligibility level of 255% of poverty in 2015.
The ACA also established health exchanges where people can purchase plans and allowed for federal tax credits for people making up to 400 percent of the federal poverty level ($79,160 for a family of three in 2015). Tax credits are generally only available to people who are not eligible for other coverage. But she said the state’s steadfast refusal to expand Medicaid will keep too many without coverage.
Texas has the most people in the coverage gap with 766,000, followed by Florida with 567,000 people, Georgia with 305,000 people and North Carolina with 244,000 people. The Congressional Budget Office estimates 33 million people will have a health plan through Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program or the exchanges by 2016, a large jump from the current 17.6 million people who have become insured under the ACA.
Additionally, 10 percent of the uninsured, or 3.1 million people, fall into the gap in which they earn too much to be considered for Medicaid, but they don’t earn enough to qualify for ACA financial assistance.
There were 1,035,000 Texans who are “eligible for subsidies” but aren’t using available tax credits to buy marketplace coverage. The White House continues to say it will zero in on areas with high rates of uninsured individuals. In states that expanded Medicaid, 40% of the nonelderly uninsured population is eligible for Medicaid, versus just 13% in states that have not expanded Medicaid (Figure 2).
But Florida is among a group of 20 mostly Republican-led states that have opposed Medicaid expansion.
Nationwide, an estimated 8.5 million are eligible for Medicaid but have not enrolled, and another 7.1 million are eligible for tax credits on the Marketplace but have not signed up for coverage.
NOTES: Numbers may not sum to 100% due to rounding. Independent candidate Drew Curtis has said he would support the expansion as long as the state could afford it.