Medicaid covered more than 650,000 adult Kentuckians in 3rd quarter 2016

78 Percent Qualified Under Expanded Medicaid Income Limits

LOUISVILLE, Ky – (Feb. 9, 2017) — More than three-quarters of the adult Kentuckians covered by Medicaid in the third quarter of 2016 were eligible only because Kentucky had expanded its Medicaid program, according to the latest snapshot from the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky’s ongoing study of the Affordable Care Act implementation in the Commonwealth.

Ben Chandler, president and CEO of the Foundation, said: “The latest available numbers continue to show that expansion of Medicaid in Kentucky has greatly increased the number of low-income people who have health insurance. Improving the health of Kentucky means making sure no Kentuckians have to rely on the emergency room for health care. That’s a particular concern for those vulnerable Kentuckians who earn incomes that fall just above the poverty level but are still too low for them to afford other health insurance.”

Medicaid covered 650,867 adult Kentuckians in the third quarter of 2016; of those, 78 percent were Medicaid expansion enrollees. The largest group of expansion enrollees – 128,221, or 25 percent — were adults ages 26-34. Adults 19-25 (108,839) encompassed another 22 percent of expansion enrollees.

Thirty-one percent of those covered by Medicaid live in Eastern Kentucky, which is home to 22 percent of the state’s population, the snapshot showed.

“Large numbers of Medicaid enrollees also reside in nearly every other region of Kentucky,” Chandler said.

A copy of third quarter 2016 snapshot from the Study of the Impact of the ACA Imple­menta­tion in Kentucky is available here. Previous snapshots and other special reports from the study are available here.