Report: Ky. sees biggest drop in uninsured

Kentucky saw the largest drop in the percentage of residents who do not have health insurance than any other state between 2013 and 2014, according to a report released Wednesday by the U.S. Census Bureau.

The number of Kentuckians without health insurance fell by 250,000 in 2014, the report says. And the percent of the state’s population without health insurance dropped from 14.3 percent to 8.5 percent.

While 13 states had a lower percentage of its people uninsured in 2014, the report says Kentucky’s drop of 5.8 percentage points from one year to the next was the biggest of any state.

States which took the option under the Affordable Care Act to expand their Medicaid coverage to 138 percent of the federal poverty level – about $16,000 for a single person – saw much bigger reductions of their uninsured populations than states that did not expand Medicaid, the report shows.

Gov. Steve Beshear said in a statement that the report "is yet another independent, unbiased confirmation that Kentucky is on the path to make transformational changes in the lives and health of our Commonwealth and hundreds of thousands of Kentuckians."

Ashley Spalding, research and policy associate at the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy, in Berea, said, "This data confirms Medicaid expansion and kynect (Kentucky’s online health insurance marketplace) are commonsense solutions for helping Kentuckians be healthy and more productive members of their communities.” She added: “We already knew Kentucky was seeing huge benefits from those solutions, but the country’s official data on health insurance rates reaffirms the impact.”

Terry Brooks, executive director of Kentucky Youth Advocates, also said the report confirms a positive trend sparked by the Affordable Care Act.

Brooks focused on the report’s findings for coverage of children, which he said “revealed that 95.7 percent of Kentucky children under 18 had health insurance in 2014 compared with 94.1 percent in 2013. This is an increase of 16,000 children.”

Brooks said the political debate surrounding the Affordable Care Act, widely known as “Obamacare,” obscures the “reality” that more children and adults are getting healthier because they are covered.

“Kids are better off today because of changes in the health care system, and that is a win that calls for bipartisan applause,” Brooks said.

The Census Bureau report found that the percentage of people across the country who had no health insurance during the entire year fell from 13.3 percent in 2013 to 10.4 percent in 2014 – a drop of 2.9 percentage points.