Is expanding Medicaid coverage feasible and beneficial? That is the question many states have been asking themselves since 2014, when the government extended eligibility to low income adults up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level.
If a state does choose to expand its Medicaid coverage, who exactly is eligible for expanded coverage? The Kaiser Family Foundation dove into data and outlined the following five findings.
1. Approximately 8.8 million — or 27 percent — of the 32.3 million nonelderly people who were uninsured as of 2015 are eligible for Medicaid or the Children's Health Insurance Program. This includes 5.7 million who are Medicaid-eligible adults and 3.2 million who are Medicaid or CHIP-eligible children.
2. The majority of these uninsured and eligible individuals — 6.8 million people, or 77 percent — live in states that have expanded Medicaid. These states have higher income eligibility requirements than non-expansion states.
3. Uninsured individuals eligible for Medicaid are concentrated in a few large states. One third of uninsured and eligible individuals live in California, New York, Pennsylvania or Texas. Approximately 37 percent of uninsured and eligible children live in one of four states: California, Florida, New York or Texas.
4. In both expansion and non-expansion states, more than 50 percent of the uninsured and Medicaid-eligible adults are people of color. In expansion states, African Americans make up 16 percent of the uninsured and eligible. In non-expansion states, African Americans make up 29 percent of the uninsured and eligible. In both expansion and non-expansion states, Hispanics make up the greatest portion of uninsured and eligible children (40 percent in expansion states and 38 percent in non-expansion states).
5. Eligibility patterns among the uninsured differ between expansion states and non-expansion states. Nationwide, approximately two thirds of the uninsured and eligible are adults and one third is children. In expansion states, the proportion of eligible, uninsured adults is a bit higher, at 76 percent. Approximately 55 percent are non-parent adults. But in non-expansion states, 25 percent of the uninsured and eligible are adults, and just 3 percent are non-parent adults.
Click here to read all of the Kaiser Family Foundation's findings.