Connecticut: Medicaid expansion enrollment up 23% since COVID hit; total Medicaid up 13%

As I noted recently, I've relaunched my project from last fall to track Medicaid enrollment (both standard and expansion alike) on a monthly basis for every state dating back to the ACA being signed into law.

For total monthly Medicaid enrollment, the official Medicaid.gov monthly enrollment data is only available dating back to late 2013, and it's only current through November 2020. The Kaiser Family Foundation has also compiled the pre-2014 average enrollment for each state based on the 3rd quarter of 2013. In some states I've been able to find more recent enrollment data for December 2020 or later.

For Medicaid expansion enrollment, I'm using data from Medicaid.gov's Medicaid Enrollment Data Collected Through MBES reports. These are even more outdated...I can only get official numbers through June 2019 at the moment.

Today I'm presenting Connecticut, where Medicaid enrollment averaged around 650,000 residents prior to ACA expansion...except that included up to 100,000 who were added to the Medicaid tally early via special arrangements between the state and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

Fortunately, I've been able to get the missing enrollment data from 2013, 2020 and 2021 from the CT Dept. of Social Services.

After Medicaid expansion officially went into effect starting in January 2014, total enrollment grew quickly, then more gradually, before settling at around 845,000 Nutmeggers in February 2020.

Since then, to no one's surprise, enrollment has taken off again due to the COVID pandemic: As of March 2021, non-ACA Medicaid is up a modest 8% but ACA expansion enrollment is up 22.6% and overall Medicaid enrollment is up 12.6%, or around 106,000 residents, to roughly 951,000 total.

Connecticut has 3.57 million residents, so 951,000 is 26.7% of the entire population. Around 323,000 of them are covered via ACA expansion, although ~24,000 of those were eligible for Medicaid pre-ACA. Throw in the ~105,000 enrolled in subsidized exchange plans and that's up to 404,000 who'd lose coverage almost immediately if the ACA is struck down by the Supreme Court, or 11.3% of the total state population.