Enough young Latinos got health insurance under new Obamacare provisions to lower the uninsured rate by 20 points, researchers reported Thursday. Last year, 43 percent of Latinos aged 19 to 34 went without health insurance; by spring of this year that number fell to 23 percent, the Commonwealth Fund found. The overall rate of uninsured Latinos dropped from 36 percent to 23 percent, Michelle Doty and colleagues found.
“However, the high uninsured rate among Latinos in states that had not expanded their Medicaid program at the time of the survey — 33 percent — remained statistically unchanged. These states are home to about 20 million Latinos, the majority of whom live in Texas and Florida,” the Commonwealth report reads. The 2010 Affordable Care Act seeks to get more people insured by expanding Medicaid, the federal-state health insurance plan for the poor, but not all states joined in. It also provides for young adults to stay on their parents’ health insurance and set up insurance exchanges for people to buy subsidized health insurance. “The Affordable Care Act appears to be working for millions of Latinos who, as a group, have long faced the nation’s highest uninsured rates,” said Doty.
IN-DEPTH
— Maggie Fox