Kentucky: Obamacare cut uninsured rate in half!

Since today seems to be "How much has the ACA cut the uninsured rate by in this state/that state?" day, I thought I'd dust off this TPM article from way back on April 1st:

Obamacare has cut Kentucky's uninsured population by more than 40 percent, signing up roughly 360,000 residents since enrollment opened up on Oct. 1, according to the Louisville Courier-Journal.

Some 75 percent of them -- 270,000 -- were previously uninsured. That means Kentucky's uninsured population of 640,000 has come down by 42 percent.

At the time, the headline read "Obamacare Cuts Kentucky's Uninsured Rate By 40 Percent", which was impressive enough. However, that was wayyyy back over 2 months ago. A little simple math tells the rest of the story:

  • According to Kynect's final report (confirmed by the HHS report which only varied by a couple dozen people), their enrollment total as of 4/15 stood at 413,310 (83K in QHPs, 330K on Medicaid).
  • The same report still had the "previously uninsured" rate at the same 75% as the earlier report.
  • That means the previously uninsured number dropped by another 40,000 by mid-April, to 310,000
  • 310,000 out of 640,000 is a 48.4% uninsured reduction as of 4/15

But wait, there's more!

I don't have any data since mid-April for Kentucky (why???), but Minnesota's combined exchange-based QHP/Medicaid enrollment tally is up over 25% since 4/15 (with QHPs up 6%), and Colorado's QHP tally is also up 6%. Oregon's QHP total is up over 25% since 4/19 even without Medicaid included, although that's a bit skewed since they bumped out their extension period an extra 2 weeks.

The point is, it's safe to assume that Kentucky's combined QHP/Medicaid via the Kynect exchange has gone up easily another 10% since 4/15 (another 41K at a minimum), and there's no reason to think that the "previously uninsured" rate has dropped below that 75% rate, so it's very likely that the uninsured rate has in turn dropped another 30K or so, reducing the total uninsured number by at least 53%.

Even if you split the difference (48% as of 4/15, 53% estimated as of today), that's still at least a 50% drop.

Advertisement