Marketplace Eligibility Among the Uninsured: Implications for a Broadened Enrollment Period and ACA Outreach
Daniel McDermott, Cynthia Cox Follow @cynthiaccox on Twitter, and Gary Claxton (KFF Published: Jan 27, 2021)
Based on campaign pledges, President Biden is expected to reopen Marketplace enrollment, for example, through a COVID-19 special enrollment opportunity (SEP), and his administration is also expected to direct significantly more resources to marketing and outreach efforts. Millions of people remain uninsured despite being eligible for free or reduced cost coverage through the ACA Marketplaces or Medicaid Expansion.
In an earlier analysis, we estimated that the overall uninsured rate had not changed dramatically as of September 2020, in large part because losses in employer coverage appear to have been offset by gains in Medicaid coverage. While this suggests the ACA is working as a safety net during the current economic crisis, a relatively flat uninsured rate suggests there are still likely tens of millions of Americans without health insurance during a global pandemic.
In our analysis of the approximately 15 million uninsured people nationally who could be get coverage on the Marketplace:
