Uninsured rates are falling in every state… except Kansas. That’s according to a Gallup survey released Tuesday. Heartland Health Monitor’s Dan Margolies reports.
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Although not statistically significant, the Sunflower State’s 1.9 point increase makes it the only state in the country to witness an uptick in its uninsured rate. In 2013, 12.5 percent of the state’s residents lacked health insurance, according to Gallup. In 2014, that percentage had risen to 14.4 percent. Kansas, of course, has chosen not to set up its own state marketplace under Obamacare. And it’s one of 22 states that have declined to expand Medicaid. Linda Sheppard, a senior policy analyst at the Kansas Health Institute, is skeptical of the results.
“We had new people in the marketplace, we had several thousand people were added to the Medicaid rolls, and we knew that the (insurance) companies had been allowed to maintain those transitional plans in place and a large number of people kept those plans.”
But she notes that there are no reliable data on how many people have lost or dropped their health insurance. So the figures could be right after all. Dan Margolies, Heartland Health Monitor
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