The Basics of Healthcare Coverage for Low-Income Workers

This article discusses the Fundamentals of Health insurance coverage for low-income earners. These include Medicaid, Reinsurance, Tax credits, and ACA individual market. This information is crucial for low-income adults struggling to make ends meet. In addition, it will help you understand what to do to keep your health insurance costs low.

Medicaid

Millions of Americans with low incomes have access to healthcare thanks to Medicaid. Additionally, it functions as a high-risk pool for the private insurance industry. In the fiscal year 2017, Medicaid covered over 75 million people. In addition, 37 states have expanded Medicaid to cover more people, and 12.6 million people were newly eligible. Of those new enrollees, 43% were children, while one in five were older adults or people with disabilities. Companies like IEHP aim to provide comprehensive healthcare coverage to as many people as possible while limiting the financial burden.

This study shows that Medicaid expansion increases health coverage among low-income earners. In addition, it increases the probability of higher education for low-income people. However, the Medicaid expansion does have some limitations. For example, the study was only conducted between two years and one year before the Medicaid expansion and therefore did not include states that had Medicaid expansion after 2018. Further, future waves of data may allow researchers to revisit the study’s estimates, but this isn’t a reliable way to make policy recommendations.

ACA individual market

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) was created to make health insurance accessible to people with low and moderate incomes. The reforms included subsidies to offset the costs of individual market health insurance plans. It also prohibited specific premium settings based on health status and gender. In 2010, 60 percent of Americans said it was challenging to find affordable health insurance. By 2016, that number had decreased to 34 percent. But while the law has improved access to health insurance coverage, many people are still uninsured.

The ACA individual market premium subsidies, or premium tax credits, were set at roughly eight percent of household income. They have been more generous for 2021 to 2025, though, and the number of subsidies is capped at 9.86 percent of household income. The premium subsidies also limit insurers’ ability to exploit their market power. Moreover, state regulators review individual market premiums and challenge them if they do not meet the minimum requirement.

Reinsurance

The impact of reinsurance on health insurance coverage varies depending on the characteristics of individuals. Typically, higher-income residents benefit more from the program because they are more able to afford cheaper insurance. In general, the impact of reinsurance is not to expand coverage but to solidify it. This type of insurance allows previously uninsured people to join a group insurance plan.

The policymakers in Washington state were particularly interested in the effects of reinsurance on the coverage of small firms and non-group purchasers. Accordingly, they modeled the impact of various reinsurance configurations, including different specifications of eligible populations and corridors. They also looked at the effect of state general funding on the impact of reinsurance.

Uninsured Children

Many factors influence the number of uninsured children. One factor that affects the health of children without insurance is low household income. Another is low parental educational attainment. In addition, children of low and middle-income earners are more likely to be uninsured for long periods.

The number of uninsured children in the US varies based on income and race. For example, children from low-income earners were much more likely to be uninsured than children from higher-income families. The proportion of uninsured children was also higher among children from one-parent families compared to two-parent families.

The ACA has increased health insurance coverage for low-income children, reducing the number of uninsured children. But uninsured children are still disproportionately concentrated in non-expansion states. Increasing access to health insurance coverage for adults in these states would help increase the range for children.