October 20, 2017

Health insurance reduced the 2014 poverty rate by one quarter

Center on Budget & Policy Priorities - Health insurance coverage reduced the poverty rate by nearly one-quarter in 2014, according to a new analysis in Health Affairs that factors the premium costs and benefits of health insurance into the poverty rate. That equates to lifting more than 14.4 million people out of poverty.

The one-quarter figure represents a reduction from a poverty rate that includes health insurance costs but does not include non-cash benefits, such as health insurance benefits. Public health insurance alone — Medicaid, Medicare, and federal tax credits and cost-sharing reductions that enable eligible families to more easily afford individual marketplace coverage — is responsible for more than half of that reduction, lifting more than 8 million people out of poverty. People living in households with someone with a disability (nearly 2 million) and non-Hispanic whites (nearly 3 million) were among those receiving the most significant benefits from public insurance.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Now if the US official poverty level actually reflected what it costs to live in the US, this would be good news. Sadly the official US poverty level is so low this benefit doesn't lift anybody out of poverty truly, it only relieves a small part of the deep pit of their poverty.