Kentucky: Medicaid expansion enrollment up 44% since COVID hit; total Medicaid up 28%

I've once again relaunched my project from last fall to track Medicaid enrollment (both standard and expansion alike) on a monthly basis for every state dating back to the ACA being signed into law.

For the various enrollment data, I'm using data from Medicaid.gov's Medicaid Enrollment Data Collected Through MBES reports. Unfortunately, they've only published enrollment data through December 2020. In some states I've been able to get more recent enrollment data from state websites and other sources.

Today I'm presenting Kentucky. For enrollment data from January 2021 on, I'm relying on adjusted estimates based on raw data from the Kentucky Cabinet for Health & Family Services.

After ACA expansion ramped up starting in early 2014, Kentucky's overall enrollment in both traditional and ACA-expansion Medicaid hovered around 1.3 million people for more than 4 years straight...until COVID hit last spring. Since then, traditional Medicaid enrollment has increased by 18.7% and ACA expansion has gone up by 43.9%, for an overall climb of around 27.5% to date.

Kentucky has 4,505,836 residents according to the 2020 U.S. Census. As of June 2021:

• around 1.6 million are enrolled in Medicaid overall, or 26.9% of the population
• around 971,000 are enrolled in non-ACA Medicaid
• around 633,000 are enrolled in ACA Medicaid expansion.

• Add in the ~65,000 subsidized ACA exchange enrollees and that's around 698,000 Kentuckians who would lose healthcare coverage if the Supreme Court strikes down the Affordable Care Act, or 15.5% of the state population.