If the Obama administration wants more uninsured parents to get health coverage, it is going to have to do something about cost, a new analysis finds.
The left-leaning think tank Urban Institute found in an analysis released Wednesday that cost was the primary reason uninsured parents remain without insurance. The results show that affordable coverage is still beyond reach for some families, researchers said.
The think tank looked at responses to the Urban Institute’s Health Reform Monitoring Survey of parents living with children under 17 years old. The survey, done from March and September last year, was of about 7,500 people ages 18 to 64.
It found that about 65 percent cited the cost of insurance or their inability to afford coverage as the primary reason. The next reason was parents were in transition to other coverage (13.7 percent) and didn’t know what options were available (7 percent).
Uninsured parents also have significant financial problems, the think tank said.
In September, about 58 percent of the parents surveyed said their family often ran out of food in the past year. About 45 percent couldn’t pay rent or other housing costs.
Obamacare provides tax credits to help pay down the cost of insurance, but only about 40 percent of people are eligible. The income range is 139 to 399 percent of the federal poverty level in states that expanded Medicaid and 100 to 399 percent in states that didn’t.
A separate brief issued by the Urban Institute analyzing the same survey found that coverage had expanded among parents. Last year the number of parents who were covered at the time of the survey increased by six percentage points from 2013.
The results are the latest to show that affordability concerns still exist despite Obamacare, which was created to help lower healthcare costs.
Urban said that other analyses of the same survey found perceived “affordability problems to be the most significant barrier to coverage for the remaining uninsured adults.”
On Tuesday a New York Times/Kaiser Family Foundation poll found that one in five insured people are having trouble paying their medical bills.
