New numbers on ACA enrollment are out, and nearly half a million Texans have applied for coverage through the federal exchange. The latest numbers from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services show us that:
- 457,382 total Texans who applied for coverage through completed applications
- 390,658 Texans have been found eligible to enroll in a marketplace plan
- 47,000 found eligible to enroll in the state’s existing Medicaid or CHIP plans
Ed Espinoza, Executive Director of Progress Texas, released the following statement:
“Twelve weeks of ACA has done more to help Texans without health care than Rick Perry has done in twelve years as Governor.”
In addition to the top-line numbers, a little digging shows how Rick Perry and Greg Abbott’s refusal to expand Medicaid has created a significant coverage gap in Texas:
- 210,309 Texans who applied for coverage could have received financial assistance for the Marketplace plans.
Many, if not most, of those 210,000+ Texans who couldn’t get financial assistance would have been covered if Texas had expanded Medicaid. We also know that one million low-income Texans are left out of health coverage because elected leaders in Texas chose politics over what was right for our people. (Source: www.TexasLeftMeOut.org.)
Under the nation’s health law, every person is supposed to have a way to get health care coverage. But in Texas, when elected officials refused Medicaid expansion, it left more than one million Texans in a coverage gap. This means people who could have qualified for Medicaid won’t receive the benefits of the new health law – including veterans and their spouses, as well as workers in construction, child care, health care, and service industries. Therefore most of the people taking the newly created jobs in Texas won’t qualify.
