Expanding Medicaid Especially Beneficial for Rural Georgia, Study Finds
Georgia, which didn’t expand Medicaid, saw virtually no drop in its rural uninsured—still representing one in three.
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In states that expanded Medicaid, the uninsured rate of people living in rural areas of that state dropped at a rate three times that of states that didn’t expand the joint federal-state health insurance program for low income individuals.
To make that a bit easier to digest, take a state like Kentucky. The Bluegrass State expanded Medicaid and saw its rural uninsured population drop from about one in three people to about about one in six.
A state like Georgia, which didn’t expand Medicaid, saw virtually no drop in its rural uninsured—still representing one in three.
That’s the finding of a just-released report by Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families and University of North Carolina’s N-C Rural Health Project.
To talk more about how Georgia’s rural population plays into the findings, WABE host Jim Burress spoke with Joan Aker, executive director of the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families.
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