A majority of uninsured people live in states that did not expand Medicaid, according to a new survey.
The survey conducted by the left-leaning think tank Urban Institute found that more than 22 percent of the remaining uninsured would qualify for Medicaid if it were expanded in their state.
The findings come a week after the Obama administration announced that the uninsured rate dropped to below 10 percent of the population. In the first quarter of 2015, 29 million people (about 9 percent of the population) did not have insurance, according to findings from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The survey found that about 53 percent of the remaining uninsured in the U.S. live in a state that didn’t expand Medicaid. Nineteen states have not expanded Medicaid.
The survey also found that a larger share of the uninsured population is in Southern states. Before Obamacare was passed, Southern states had a 41 percent share, which has increased to 48 percent, according to the survey funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
For the remaining uninsured, a big problem to getting coverage is affordability. More than six in 10 remaining uninsured told the Urban Institute that they couldn’t afford coverage.
“A growing share of the remaining uninsured are not eligible for publicly funded options, and many of the rest are opting out on affordability grounds,” said Kathy Hempstead, who directs coverage issues for the foundation.
The Urban Institute analyzed data from its Health Reform Monitoring Survey, which was conducted in March of about 7,500 adults.
