Rhode Island: Medicaid expansion enrollment up 30% since COVID hit; total Medicaid up 12%

Rhode Island

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. Unfortunately, Rhode Island is among the few states where I haven't been able to get ahold of post-2020 data yet, even estimates.

Rhode Island's total Medicaid enrollment (including ACA expansion) reached an all-time high of around 313,000 back in mid-2017. Since then it gradually dropped to around 290,000 just ahead of the COVID pandemic...but since then non-expansion enrollment has gone up by 7% and the ACA expansion population has risen by over 30%, meaning total enrollment is up 12% overall.

Rhode Island has 1,097,379 residents according to the 2020 U.S. Census. As of December 2020:

  • around 320,000 were enrolled in Medicaid overall, or 29.2% of the population
  • around 238,000 were enrolled in non-ACA Medicaid
  • around 82,000 were enrolled in ACA Medicaid expansion

Add in the ~25,000 subsidized ACA exchange enrollees and that's around 107,000 Rhode Island residents who would lose healthcare coverage if the Supreme Court strikes down the Affordable Care Act, or 9.8% of the state population.

Advertisement