Health Beat: Kaiser Report Shows 45% Of Arkansas’ Uninsured Eligible For Medicaid, ACA Coverage
by October 14, 2015 12:09 am 165 views
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KAISER FOUNDATION REPORT: NEARLY 45% OF ARKANSAS’ UNINSURED ELIGIBLE FOR MEDICAID, ACA COVERAGE – Weeks away from the Affordable Care Act’s third open enrollment period, a new Kaiser Family Foundation analysis finds that 44% of the 285,000 people without insurance in Arkansas are eligible for Medicaid or coverage through the ACA marketplace.
Nationwide, nearly half (49% or 15.7 million) of the 32.3 million non-elderly people in the U.S. without health insurance at the beginning of 2015 are eligible for Medicaid or subsidized ACA coverage through an ACA marketplace, the study shows.
On a state level, the share of the uninsured population eligible for those two forms of insurance-related financial assistance ranges from 35% in Nebraska and Texas to 75% in West Virginia, according to the analysis, which uses data from the 2015 Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement and other sources. The analysis, based on an eligibility model developed by Kaiser researchers, provides state-level data on people without insurance who are eligible for Medicaid or subsidized ACA coverage, and on those who are ineligible.
The view the Kaiser Foundation report and supporting data, click here.
JOHN SELIG RESIGNING AS DHS DIRECTOR: John Selig, the director of the Arkansas Department of Human Services, announced last week that he will leave the department at the end of the year. Selig, 55, was appointed to the position in 2005 by Gov. Mike Huckabee and is the state’s longest serving DHS director.
STEPHEN GROUP REPORT: KEEP BUT CHANGE PRIVATE OPTION: A consultant hired by legislators says Arkansas’ Medicaid program is “on an unsustainable path” with higher costs than other states. Meanwhile, the state’s Medicaid and private option rolls include nearly 43,000 Medicaid and private option beneficiaries who may not live in Arkansas, and almost 500 who are no longer alive. But The Stephen Group did not call for ending the private option. Instead, it recommended options meant to make it a more transitional program. Meanwhile, Medicaid should be retooled to be less costly while providing better outcomes. Read more here.
INTERNATIONAL DIABETES RESEARCH KNOWLEDGE PORTAL OPENS TO PUBLIC, SCIENTISTS: Researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Foundation for the NIH (FNIH) have expanded a recently-launched online library, called a knowledge portal, which allows open-access searching of human genetic and clinical information on type 2 diabetes.
The portal collects data from human genetic samples, since the animal and cellular models that are typically used in diabetes drug development before human testing do not always replicate human behavior. It provides a way to identify the most promising therapeutic targets for diabetes from troves of potentially relevant human data. The portal also includes information from several major international networks, collected from decades of research. For more information, visit here.