The uninsured number of Americans fell to a record low of 7.7% in the first quarter of 2023, just as a pandemic-era rule expiration in April imperiled 15 million people’s Medicaid coverage, possibly driving the uninsured rate back up.1
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- The uninsured rate fell to a record low in the first quarter of 2023.
- In April, the pandemic-era continuous enrollment provision for Medicaid coverage expired, meaning up to 15 million Americans have to re-enroll in the program or lose their coverage.
- It’s estimated that 3.9 million people have lost Medicaid coverage since the rule expired.
According to a survey released by the Centers for Disease Control yesterday, the uninsured rate for Americans fell to 7.7% in Q1, down from 8.3% in the last quarter of 2022.1 But that is likely to change when numbers are reported for Q2 of 2023, revealing the impact of the changes to Medicaid enrollment.
The 2020 temporary, pandemic-era change to the enrollment rules for Medicaid—the government’s program to insure low-income Americans—meant the federal government barred states from kicking people off of Medicaid rolls unless they moved out of state or died. That was significant because, in normal times, people lose Medicaid coverage for fluctuating income, losing documentation, and other bureaucratic reasons.2
Studies have shown that the freeze in removals was the main reason Medicaid rolls swelled by 23.3 million people during the pandemic, driving down the uninsured rate.3
As of Thursday, at least 3.9 million people had been disenrolled from Medicaid since the “continuous enrollment” provision expired, according to a tracker created by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit healthcare research organization.4
The low uninsured rate of early 2023 was a far cry from the 18.2% uninsured rate in 2010 when Obamacare was introduced.5 People without health insurance can be denied non-emergency medical treatment and are at greater risk of incurring expensive medical bills if they do seek care.
Between 2013 and 2016, medical expenses contributed to 58.5% of all bankruptcies, according to a 2019 study by David U. Himmelstein, a professor of public health at the City University of New York, and other researchers, based on a survey of 910 people.
https://www.investopedia.com/americans-with-health-insurance-record-high-until-april-7569666
