The Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act with one major exception; it declared that states did not have to expand their Medicaid eligibility rules.
However, the ACA may have indirectly increased Medicaid enrollment even in States that did not change their eligilbity rules.
Avalere Health reports that:
17 of the 26 states that did not expand Medicaid in the first three months of 2014 still reported growth in Medicaid enrollment, ranging from 0.1 percent in Texas to 10.1 percent in Montana. Since these states had decided not to expand Medicaid eligibility levels under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), these numbers show the impact of the “woodwork effect,” which is when individuals who were previously eligible, but not enrolled in Medicaid, newly sign up as a result of increased outreach and awareness.
Some additional statistics from their report:
State | Woodwork Beneficiaries | % Increase in Enrollment |
Georgia | 98,800 | 5.8% |
North Carolina | 58,000 | 3.3% |
Tennessee | 53,700 | 4.3% |
South Carolina | 53,600 | 5.4% |
Indiana | 45,000 | 4.0% |
Pennsylvania | 41,000 | 1.7% |
Oklahoma | 38,300 | 4.8% |
Virginia | 36,600 | 3.6% |
Michigan | 30,400 | 1.6% |
Kansas | 22,500 | 5.7% |
Idaho | 19,000 | 7.5% |
Mississippi | 17,800 | 2.5% |
Montana | 14,100 | 10.1% |
Utah | 10,400 | 3.2% |
New Hampshire | 7,600 | 6.0% |
Texas | 3,200 | 0.1% |
South Dakota | 0,200 | 0.2% |
Total | 550,300 | 2.8% |
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