Oregon: Medicaid expansion enrollment up 30% since COVID hit; total Medicaid up 22%

Oregon

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 most states I've been able to get more recent enrollment data from state websites and other sources.

For Oregon, I'm relying on raw data from the Oregon Health Authority for January 2021 and later.

Total Medicaid enrollment in Oregon (including ACA expansion peaked at a little over 1.1 million back in 2015, but dropped off to around 950,000 for a couple of years before COVID hit the country. Since then, non-ACA enrollment has gone up about 14%, ACA expansion has increased by over 30% and overall enrollment is 22% higher than it was in February 2020.

Oregon has 4,327,256 residents according to the 2020 U.S. Census. As of June 2021:

  • around 1.19 million were enrolled in Medicaid overall, or 26.5% of the population
  • around 569,000 were enrolled in non-ACA Medicaid
  • around 623,000 were enrolled in ACA Medicaid expansion

Add in the ~103,000 subsidized ACA exchange enrollees and that's around 726,000 Oregon residents who would lose healthcare coverage if the Supreme Court strikes down the Affordable Care Act, or 16.7% of the state population.

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