Louisiana has seen a 6 percentage point reduction in the rate of uninsured residents since the Affordable Care Act took effect at the beginning of 2014, according to a new Gallup report out today.
And the pool of uninsured is expected to shrink even further in Louisiana if Gov. John Bel Edwards gets his way and the state becomes the 31st in the nation to expand Medicaid coverage under the ACA. Edwards signed off on starting the process soon after taking office last month.
Nationally, the number of Americans without health insurance decreased from 17.3% in 2013 to 11.7% in 2015. Still, the majority of Americans—52%—continue to disapprove of the law even as uninsured rates drop, according to Gallup’s most recent poll on the issue.
In Louisiana, uninsured rates were higher than the national average before the ACA went into effect and after. In 2013, the rate was 21.7%, and it dropped to 15.7% last year.
Gallup’s report shows a correlation between Medicaid expansion and participation in state exchanges, leading to reductions in the percentage of uninsured residents. States that participated in state health care exchanges and expanded Medicaid saw greater individual reductions in uninsured rates while states that did not embrace the law experienced less of a decline, Gallup says.
Arkansas and Kentucky, closely followed by Oregon, have had the greatest declines in the number of uninsured citizens since the Affordable Care Act took effect. Arkansas and Kentucky both saw their rates decline by 12.9 percentage points, while Oregon saw a 12.1 point reduction. Virginia, meanwhile, has seen the smallest decline since the ACA took effect, with a 0.7 point reduction in its uninsured rate.
“The only states that did not have statistically significant reductions in their respective uninsured rates since 2013 are Virginia, Wyoming, Kansas, Delaware and South Dakota,” reads the report. “Four of these five states neither established a locally managed and promoted exchange nor expanded Medicaid—South Dakota is the exception, having implemented both.”
Louisiana’s six point decline came even though it had neither expanded Medicaid nor had a state partnership exchange by Sept. 1, 2015.
Southern, Southwestern and Mountain Western states have the highest uninsured rates in the country. However, no state had a “statistically significant” increase of uninsured residents since 2013, Gallup says
