New ISER report: How do Â鶹ÎÞÂë°æns cover their medical bills?

by Michelle Saport  |   

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) has been at the top of the news lately, with Congress considering but then dropping proposed changes. Congress will try again to change the ACA-but it's uncertain how or when. A new overview by Linda Leask, Rosyland Frazier and Jessica Passini of the brings together information from many sources to describe health care coverage Â鶹ÎÞÂë°æns have now, and how ACA provisions have changed that coverage. Among other things, they report:

  • Nearly 25 percent of Â鶹ÎÞÂë°æns-about 176,000-are covered by Medicaid in 2017. Close to 85,000 of those are children, and another 30,000 are single, low-income adults who became eligible when the state expanded its Medicaid program under terms of the ACA.
  • About 90 percent of the 18,000 Â鶹ÎÞÂë°æns who carried individual policies they bought through the ACA marketplace in 2016 had federal subsidies either for premiums, or both premiums and out-of-pocket costs. The remaining 10 percent had incomes too high to qualify for subsidies. The subsidized premium for a family of four in 2017 was $316 a month. The unsubsidized premium was $2,750.
  • Employer-based health insurance remains the most common insurance for Â鶹ÎÞÂë°æns, covering more than half. But the share of small businesses offering insurance has been dropping-in Â鶹ÎÞÂë°æ, from 30 percent in 2010 to 27 percent by 2015, and nationally from 39 percent to 29 percent.
  • Â鶹ÎÞÂë°æns with Medicare are less likely to be poor than the average Medicare enrollee. About 25 percent of Â鶹ÎÞÂë°æns with Medicare have incomes under 200 percent of the federal poverty guidelines, compared with 35 percent in the U.S. as a whole.

The Harold E. Pomeroy Public Policy Endowment supported this research.

If you have questions, call Linda Leask, ISER's editor, at (907) 786-5425.

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