The percentage of uninsured Kansans flattened out in 2023 but remained higher than the national rate for the third straight year, new census data shows.
New census data out on Thursday – compiled by the Kansas Health Institute – showed Kansas with an uninsured rate of 8.4%, or 240,000 people.
It was down from 8.6% a year earlier, which wasn’t considered statistically different because of the small sample size.
By comparison, the national uninsured rate hit 7.9% in 2023, down from 8% in 2022.
Roughly 26.4 million people were estimated to be without health insurance nationally during 2023, according to the census data.
However, the state saw a slight increase in children without health insurance, while the working adult population saw an increase in coverage.
Health researchers said the stabilization could be attributable to states unwinding from a federal law that kept people on the Medicaid rolls during the pandemic and a surge in enrollment in coverage provided by the Affordable Care Act.
“After falling during the past three years, largely due to pandemic-era policies that paused Medicaid disenrollments and enhanced Affordable Care Act Marketplace premium subsidies, the uninsured rate stabilized in 2023,” wrote Jennifer Tolbert, a Medicaid expert for the health care think tank KFF.
“Continued growth in Marketplace coverage partially offset a decline in employer-based coverage, while Medicaid coverage, which had increased during the pandemic to a record high 94 million in April 2023, showed no change from 2022,” wrote Tolbert, KFF’s deputy director of the Program on Medicaid and the Uninsured.
Kari Bruffett, president and CEO of KHI, said it may be a year before the full effect of some of those policies will be seen in the uninsured data, although she said some of the fallout is already being experienced in Kansas.
For example, the new data shows a slight uptick in uninsured children.
The Kansas rate for uninsured children under 19 was 5.6% in 2023, up from 5.2% the year before – a change that was not viewed as statistically significantly.
On a national level, the percentage of uninsured children climbed to 5.4% in 2023 from 5.1% the year before.
The increase in children without health insurance wasn’t a surprise because of the thousands of children who lost Medicaid coverage as states unwound from a law ensuring that beneficiaries wouldn’t lose coverage during the pandemic.
State health officials said the single largest group affected by the unwinding process was children. They estimated that two-thirds of those who lost coverage during unwinding – about 114,000 – were children.
At one point, Kansas ranked 11th nationally in the percentage of children who lost Medicaid coverage as states unwound from the law.
“Our worst fears of thousands of kids losing health coverage due to the unwinding have become true,” said Heather Braum, senior policy adviser for Kansas for Action for Children.
She said the new data shows about 2,600 children lost health insurance last year, now putting the total of uninsured children at more than 40,000.
“These kids are likely going without medications, therapies, and routine checkups,” Braum said in an email.
“And, we know it is likely many of these newly uninsured kids remain eligible for Medicaid” or the Children’s Health Insurance Program, she said.
“We must do more to ensure every child has access to and gets signed up for insurance to keep them safe and healthy,” she said.
In contrast to what’s happening with children, there was a decrease in the percentage of uninsured – nationally and in Kansas – for adults from 19 to 64.
In Kansas, it dropped to 11.9% in 2023 from 12.5% the year before.
But it was still higher than the 2023 national rate of 11%, which was down from 11.3% in 2022.
In analyzing the data, KHI found continuing disparities in coverage for Hispanic Kansans, whose uninsured rate of 20.1% was more than three times higher than the 5.9% rate for non-Hispanic white Kansans.
It also was higher than the 16.6% uninsured rate for Hispanic Americans in the United States as a whole.
The uninsured rate for Black or African American Kansans was 10.9% compared to the 8.5% national rate for the country’s Black or African American population.
The percentage of Kansans getting employer-sponsored health insurance coverage dropped to 58.1% last year from 58.2% the year before, census data shows.
And 16.7% of Kansans bought their own insurance directly in 2023, down from 17.2% a year earlier, according to the census data.
An estimated 14.7% of Kansas who are covered by insurance are enrolled in Medicaid, a slight increase from 14.5% the year before.
