By: Team Sherrod

Reports are confirming what Ohioans already know: Medicaid expansion is working.

The latest numbers demonstrate that expanding Medicaid has driven Ohio’s uninsured rate down—while helping people get the care they need and avoid other life-altering issues like medical debt.

As Sherrod says, we need to defend the progress we’ve made in helping Americans get healthcare, not let that progress be rolled back. If you agree, make your voice heard now:

Vox: The success of Medicaid expansion

Dylan Scott – August 24, 2018

Key points:

• A new report out of Ohio, documenting the first five years of expanded Medicaid in the Buckeye State, gave us a clear picture of the stakes in the debate around expanding the program.

• The Ohio report is a rigorously collected and extensive data set on what happens in a state when it expands Medicaid with no frills (i.e., without a work requirement) and lets the program work its will for a few years.

• For the people eligible for expanded Medicaid—138% of the federal poverty level, or $21,000 for a family of three, and below—the uninsured fell by more than half, from 32.4% before Medicaid expansion to 12.8%.

• Before Obamacare, one in three people in or near poverty were uninsured in Ohio. After Obamacare, that’s dropped to one in eight.

• Of the secondary findings: People who left Medicaid expansion did so because their income increased/they got a job, or they obtained non-Medicaid coverage, in almost every case.

• About half of Medicaid expansion enrollees work, and the vast majority of them (84%) said having Medicaid made it easier to work—a notable stat as Ohio considers adding a work requirement to Medicaid.

• Another key finding: People continuously covered by Medicaid were substantially less likely to have medical debt than eligible people who were still uninsured or people who churned on and off of Medicaid.

• Remember: 17 states have still refused to expand Medicaid in Obamacare’s fifth year, leaving an estimated 2.2 million people uninsured because they can’t get the coverage the law intended them to have.

Read more here.