Increase in Medicaid under the ACA Reduces Uninsurance, According to Early Estimates

An important strategy for increasing health insurance coverage under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is expanded enrollment in Medicaid, which provides free or very low cost health insurance to low-income people. Over 6 million individuals enrolled in Medicaid or the Children?s Health Insurance Program between October 2013 and April 2014 despite the fact that only about half of the states have expanded Medicaid and the early problems with the federal health insurance website. This brief takes advantage of new data from the Health Reform Monitoring Survey to examine how much of the increase in Medicaid coverage is a net gain in insurance coverage rather than a shift to Medicaid from other coverage, as well as whether there are differences in the patterns of Medicaid changes across states and among different population subgroups.