More than half of the remaining uninsured people in the U.S. don’t qualify for government assistance, according to a new analysis of the people who still lack health coverage after Obamacare.
The Affordable Care Act has cut the uninsured rate in half, but 27 million people are still without coverage, said the report released Tuesday by the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Of that total, 15.5 million don’t qualify for help from the federal government in getting coverage, either through enrolling in the Medicaid program or getting subsidies to buy marketplace plans. That’s because they earn too much to qualify, lack legal status, have coverage offered through their employer or fall into a “coverage gap” because they live in states that didn’t expand Medicaid.
But 11.7 million uninsured Americans are eligible for financial assistance, Kaiser found. About 6 million could enroll in their state’s Medicaid program and another 5 million could buy private marketplace plans with the help of federal subsidies.
It’s those people the Obama administration is trying to target in the fourth enrollment season starting Nov. 1 — people who could afford to get plans but might not realize assistance is available to them. The administration faces heavy pressure to get more people to sign up, which could help stem insurers’ losses and keep them in the marketplaces in the future.
West Virginia, Louisiana, Vermont and Montana have the largest shares of their uninsured population who would be eligible for federal assistance.
