By Jerry Geisel, Crain News Service
PRINCETON, N.J. (Dec. 10, 2014) — Aided by health care reform law provisions that took effect at the beginning of 2014, the percentage of uninsured nonelderly adults fell by 30 percent over a 12-month period, according to a new analysis.
In September 2013, 17.7 percent of adults aged 18 through 64 were uninsured. One year later, the uninsured rate for that group had dropped nearly a third to 12.4 percent, according to the Urban Institute analysis conducted for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
That drop in the uninsured rate was, according to the report, due to Patient Protection and Affordable Care (ACA) provisions — effective Jan. 1, 2014 — that extended premium subsidies to lower-income individuals to purchase coverage in public exchanges and gave states the option to make more people eligible for Medicaid, with the federal government picking up most of the expansion cost.
“These new survey data provide more evidence that there has been a significant expansion of coverage to millions who were previously uninsured, thanks to marketplace plans and the expansion of Medicaid,” Katherine Hempstead, who directs coverage issues at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in Princeton, said in a statement.
The impact of the Medicaid expansion, under which states can extend coverage to individuals earning up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level, in reducing uninsured rates, is especially striking.
For example, in states that did not expand Medicaid, the uninsured rate among nonelderly adults dropped to 15.1 percent in September 2013, down from 19.9 percent a year earlier, while among states that expanded Medicaid, the uninsured rate during that same 12-month period fell to 10.2 percent from 16.1 percent.
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This report appeared on businessinsurance.com, the website of Crain's Business Insurance magazine, a Chicago-based sister publication of Tire Business.