What do we know about health care reform and its impacts? Every policy analyst is trying to understand this piece of federal legislation and answers are not simple nor straightforward.
Take, for example, the question of the impact of proposed Medicaid expansions. What can we say about the future impact on individuals and the state? Beginning potentially in 2014, the federal government will mandate Medicaid coverage for all individuals below a certain level of poverty (133%, which is equivalent to $24,352 for a family of three). As the federal government has already mandated similar coverage for children in families making less than 133% of the poverty level (in the 1990s), this change would mostly affects adults who are not already eligible for Medicaid due to disability or some other factor or who are not otherwise insured. What’s the magnitude of this change in coverage and who will be affected?
Predicting what will happen in 2014 is difficult. The level of Uninsurance (and who will be uninsured) is a function of many different factors, including the level of unemployment and business decisions about the offer of insurance coverage. So the closest we can reasonably come to answer the question about the magnitude of this programmatic change – absent simulating the impacts of these other critical factors – is to imagine what would happen if such a program were implemented today.
What would that look like today? If we assumed that the program was implemented today, we could expect that as many as 39,500 adults would be newly eligible and enrolled. Why 39,500? In 2008, it was estimated that there were 117,600 uninsured adults in
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