HealthDay News – Nearly 10 million Americans signed up for Medicaid as of January, and the 80 million people who have now signed up for the program are the most in its history.
The surge in enrollments during the COVID-19 pandemic means a quarter of the US population is now covered by the state’s health insurance program for the poor, the New York Times reported. The new numbers are in a government report published on Monday.
“The purpose of Medicaid is during times like these, when there is an economic downturn,” said Peggah Khorrami, MPH, a researcher at Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health who studied the surge in Medicaid enrollment during the pandemic. opposite The Times. “As people lose their jobs, Medicaid comes in and we insure people that way.”
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“There has been significant growth in Medicaid enrollments in recent economic downturns, but their focus has been on children,” Rachel Garfield, Ph.D., co-director of the Kaiser Family Foundation’s Medicaid and Uninsured Program, told The Times. “This time around, it’s interesting that a lot of the enrollment is among adults.”
Under the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid was transformed from a targeted health service designed to help certain groups of people – such as expectant mothers and people with disabilities – to a much broader program that offers largely free insurance coverage to most people below a certain income threshold. The exception is 12 states, mainly in the south, that have resisted the expansion of Medicaid.
The New York Times article
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