Approximately 24 percent of the state’s 410,000 uninsured are eligible for tax credits in the federal health care marketplace, according to a new Kaiser Family Foundation report.
The report, which has a state-by-state breakdown of numbers, also shows about 32 percent of Wisconsin’s uninsured population is eligible for Medicaid.
Forty-four percent of the state’s uninsured, meanwhile, are ineligible for financial assistance. That’s because they either have an employer-sponsored insurance offer, have an ineligible immigration status or they make too much money to get subsidized insurance, as the limit for qualifying for subsidies is 400 percent of the poverty level.
The national numbers differ depending on whether states accepted the Medicaid expansion. States that accepted the expansion generally had a larger share of their uninsured eligible for Medicaid, while states that declined the expansion had more people eligible for tax credits.
States that declined the expansion also had 19 percent of their uninsured in a “coverage gap.” That means those in the coverage gap aren’t eligible for Medicaid because they made too much money but they are also not eligible for tax credits because they didn’t make enough money.
But Wisconsin, which rejected the expansion, has no coverage gap, as those below 100 percent of the poverty level are eligible for Medicaid, while those above that level can qualify for the federal tax credits.
