Introduction

People of color face longstanding and persistent disparities in accessing health coverage that contribute to greater barriers to care and poorer health outcomes. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) Medicaid expansion to adults with incomes at or below 138% of the federal poverty level (FPL) ($27,724 for a family of three in 2015) makes many uninsured adults of color newly eligible for the program, which could increase their access to care and promote greater health equity. However, in states that do not implement the Medicaid expansion, many poor adults fall into a coverage gap and will likely remain uninsured. This brief examines the impact of this coverage gap by race and ethnicity. It is based on analysis of Current Population Survey data and Medicaid eligibility rules for adults effective January 2015. (See Methods box for more information.) It finds that uninsured Black adults are more than twice as likely as White and Hispanic uninsured adults to fall into the coverage gap since a large share of this population resides in the South where many states have not adopted the Medicaid expansion. As such, the coverage gap may contribute to widening disparities in health and health care over time.

Background

As enacted, the Medicaid expansion to low-income adults would occur nationwide, but it was effectively made a state option by the June 2012 Supreme Court ruling on the constitutionality of the ACA. As of September 2015, 30 states and DC, have adopted the expansion, while 20 states have not adopted the expansion (Figure 1).

In states that have not expanded Medicaid, 3.1 million poor uninsured adults fall into a “coverage gap” and will likely remain uninsured. These individuals would have been eligible under the Medicaid expansion. However, in the absence of the expansion, they remain ineligible for Medicaid and do not earn enough to qualify for premium tax credits to purchase Marketplace coverage, which begin at 100% FPL (Figure 2). Most of these individuals are likely to remain uninsured as they have limited access to employer coverage and are likely to find the cost of unsubsidized Marketplace coverage prohibitively expensive.

Findings

Though millions of people have gained coverage under the ACA, disparities in coverage by race and ethnicity remain. Among adults, people of color are nearly twice as likely to be uninsured than Whites (20% vs. 11%). Hispanic adults are at the highest risk of lacking coverage with more than one in four uninsured (27%), while 16% of Black adults are uninsured (Figure 3).

Over 1.7 million adults of color fall into the coverage gap, and uninsured Black adults are disproportionately likely to fall into the gap. Overall, about one in ten (11%) or 3.1 million of the total 27.5 million uninsured adults fall into the coverage gap in the 20 states that have not adopted the ACA Medicaid expansion. This group includes over 1.7 million adults of color. Uninsured Black adults are more than twice as likely as White and Hispanic uninsured adults to fall into the coverage gap. Nearly one-quarter (24%) of uninsured Black adults fall into the coverage gap, compared to 11% of White uninsured adults and 7% of Hispanic uninsured adults (Figure 4). This reflects the fact that a large share of uninsured Black adults resides in the southern region of the country where most states have not adopted the expansion. In contrast, Hispanics are less likely to fall into the gap since several key states that have large numbers of uninsured Hispanics have adopted the expansion, including California, New York, and Arizona.

Adults of color make up over half (56%) of the total 3.1 million uninsured adults in the coverage gap. Hispanics (22%) and Blacks (30%) together account for more than half of uninsured adults in the coverage gap; other people of color make up another 4%, while the remaining 44% are White (Figure 5).

Large shares of adults who fall into the coverage gap reside in a small number of states, although the geographic distribution of people in the gap across states varies by racial and ethnic group. Overall, more than half (53%) of poor adults in the coverage gap reside in just three states, including Texas (25%), Florida (18%), and Georgia (10%). However, the distribution of people in the gap across states varies by racial and ethnic group. For example, over half of (52%) of the 1.4 million uninsured poor White adults in the coverage gap reside in Texas (19%), Florida (18%), North Carolina (9%) and Georgia (6%). Six in ten (61%) of the 0.9 million uninsured poor Black adults in the coverage gap reside in Georgia (19%), Texas (16%), Florida (14%) and Louisiana (11%). Among Hispanics, nearly eight in ten (78%) of the 0.7 million uninsured poor adults in the coverage gap reside in just two states, with over half (52%) in Texas and over one in four (27%) in Florida (Figure 6).

Conclusion

As enacted, the ACA was designed to create a new continuum of coverage options to significantly reduce the number of uninsured, including a Medicaid expansion to adults with incomes at or below 138% FPL. This expansion was intended to fill longstanding gaps in the program for adults and create a nationwide base of coverage for adults comparable to the national minimum Medicaid income eligibility levels for children. The Medicaid expansion particularly affects people of color given that they are disproportionately likely to both lack health insurance and have low incomes. Increasing health coverage rates can help promote increased access to care and address the persistent disparities many people of color face in securing health coverage.

In states that have not adopted the Medicaid expansion, many poor adults with incomes below the federal poverty level fall into a coverage gap because they remain ineligible for Medicaid but earn too little to qualify for premium tax credits for Marketplace coverage. As a result, they are likely to remain uninsured. The impact of the coverage gap varies by race and ethnicity, with poor uninsured Blacks most likely to fall into the gap, since they disproportionately reside in the southern region of the country where most states are not implementing the expansion. These continued gaps in access to health coverage will likely continue to contribute to racial and ethnic as well as geographic disparities in coverage and access to care.

Samantha Artiga and Rachel Garfield are with the Kaiser Family Foundation. Anthony Damico is an independent consultant to the Kaiser Family Foundation.