More than half of ACA marketplace enrollees are in states that refused to expand Medicaid

I have noted on multiple occasions that in states that refused the ACA Medicaid expansion, marketplace enrollment has been bolstered by a large contingent of people who "should have" been enrolled in Medicaid. That is, over 2 million marketplace enrollees in those 19 states have incomes between 100% and 138% of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL) -- incomes that would have qualified all of them except for certain legally present noncitizens for Medicaid had their states accepted the expansion.

To review a few facts about these low income enrollees:

• In nonexpansion states, 36% of enrollees had incomes in the 100-138% FPL range. In mid-2016 that came to about 2.1 million enrollees.


• Close to 90% (or more*) of those low-income enrollees selected silver plans and so accessed Cost Sharing Reduction (CSR) subsidies that raised the actuarial value of their plans to 94%. That generally translates to a deductible of $0-250.


• Customer satisfaction in the ACA marketplace is much higher among enrollees who are not in high deductible plans (defined by survey conductor Kaiser as under $1500 for an individual). In Kaiser's 2016 tracking survey, 74% of enrollees in lower deductible plans rated their plans good or excellent, vs. 59% of those in higher deductible plans. And again, the vast majority of enrollees in the 100-138% FPL range are in low deductible plans.

All that said, a fact hiding in plain sight (to me, anyway) is the extent to which nonexpansion states are over-represented in the ACA marketplace. This is not surprising, since a third of enrollees in those states should have been eligible for Medicaid. Nonetheless, I find it rather startling, based on state-by-state data released by HHS in December, that as of the end of the first quarter of 2016, the 19 nonexpansion states contained: