Hawaii: Boom! Medicaid Expansion cuts HI's uninsured population in half

Hat Tip To: 
Steve Ciccarelli




That means about half of the estimated 100,000 uninsured that the Hawaii Health Connector has been targeting since October are Medicaid eligible.

It's actually even better than that. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, Hawaii has around 102,000 uninsured residents total. However, of these, around 10,000 are undocumented immigrants who are therefore not eligible for either Medicaid or QHP subsidies, bringing the potential total down to around 93,000.

Of those 93,000 people, Kaiser estimates roughly 58,000 are eligible for Medicaid (either via expansion or pre-expansion rules), which means that Hawaii has already enrolled around 83% of their potential Medicaid recipients since October.

The other 35,000 people are eligible to enroll in private QHPs; obviously Hawaii has had a tougher job on that front due to their messed-up exchange, only adding 4,661 people (plus another 4,000 via SHOP or off-exchange enrollments).