HealthLeaders: Medicaid Expansion Could Have Covered an Additional 4M People in 2020
By Melanie Blackman | June 9, 2020
If 15 states had expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), an additional 3.9 million people would have been insured in 2020, according to a report released by the Urban Institute Monday.
The study, supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, made estimations using the Health Insurance Policy Simulation Model (HIPSM), a model of the health insurance system “designed to estimate the cost and coverage effects of proposed health care policy options.”
The most significant declines in the uninsured population would have been in southern states that have not expanded Medicaid under the ACA: Alabama at 43.1%, Mississippi at 39%, Missouri at 36.4%, and South Carolina 36.3%. Meanwhile, Wisconsin would experience the smallest percentage decrease, (16%), in its uninsured population.