Many Uninsured African Americans Will Benefit From Obamacare...But Not In Atlanta

Of the 6.8 million uninsured African-Americans who are eligible for health insurance through the Affordable Care Act, 60 percent meet the income thresholds for financial assistance to help pay for it, according to a report released this morning by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. That’s about 4.2 million African-Americans who qualify for benefits either by way of Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) or a tax break. Under the Care Act, the limit for how much you can make at work to qualify for Medicaid was raised to expand the pool of people who can receive those benefits. But states can opt out of that Medicaid expansion, and right now roughly half of the states have indicated they will. If all the states cooperated with the Medicaid expansion, then 95 percent of uninsured African-Americans would qualify for assistance. Right now, 20 percent of African-Americans are uninsured compared to 16 percent of the U.S. population in general (who aren’t Medicare-elderly-beneficiaries).

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