(Press-News.org) HOUSTON – (Sept. 3, 2014) – The percentage of Texans without health insurance dropped after the first enrollment period of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), according to a report released today by the Episcopal Health Foundation and Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy.
The report found that since the opening of the ACA's Health Insurance Marketplace, the percentage of uninsured adult Texans dropped by a little more than 2 percent. The report estimates 378,000 more Texans had health insurance in June 2014 than in September 2013.
The small gain in Texans with health insurance was similar to gains in other states that did not expand Medicaid coverage. However, states that expanded Medicaid experienced the largest reductions in uninsured adults – 6 percent compared with the 2 percent in Texas.
"While the insurance gains in Texas demonstrate that people are enrolling in coverage, Texas is also the state with the highest percentage of uninsured adults in the nation," said Elena Marks, CEO of the Episcopal Health Foundation and a health policy scholar at the Baker Institute. "That means Texas had the farthest to go in reducing the uninsured rate."
Even with nearly 400,000 newly uninsured adults, the report estimates Texas has now surpassed California to become the state with the highest number of uninsured residents.
The report found the majority of the remaining uninsured adult Texans are Hispanic and low-income. Half of those uninsured are employed.
"The way to make the biggest improvement in covering the uninsured population in Texas is through Medicaid expansion," said Vivian Ho, the chair in health economics at Rice's Baker Institute, a professor of economics at Rice and a professor of medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. "In states like Texas that have not expanded Medicaid, the opportunity to reduce the percent of uninsured adults through the ACA without Medicaid expansion is limited."
An estimated 20 percent of uninsured adult Texans are undocumented and unable to take advantage of Medicaid or Marketplace plans.
The report is the seventh in a series on the implementation of the ACA in Texas co-authored by Marks and Ho.
The Health Reform Monitoring Survey (HRMS)-Texas report is based on a national project that provides timely information on implementation issues under the ACA and changes in health insurance coverage and related health outcomes. The Episcopal Health Foundation and Baker Institute are partnering to fund and report on key factors about Texans obtained from an expanded representative sample of Texas residents. Today's report contains responses from 1,595 Texans in September 2013 and 1,538 in March 2014.
INFORMATION:
The survey was developed by the Urban Institute, conducted by the company GfK and jointly funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Ford Foundation and the Urban Institute.
The analyses and conclusions based on HRMS-Texas are those of the authors and do not represent the views of the Urban Institute, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation or the Ford Foundation.
For more information or to schedule an interview with Marks, contact Brian Sasser, communications director at the Episcopal Health Foundation, at bsasser@episcopalhealth.org or 832-795-9404.
To schedule an interview with Ho, contact Jeff Falk, associate director of national media relations at Rice, at jfalk@rice.edu or 713-348-6775.
Related materials
Full survey/report: http://bakerinstitute.org/research/insurance-status-adult-texans.
The Episcopal Health Foundation: http://www.episcopalhealth.org.
Marks bio: http://bakerinstitute.org/experts/elena-m-marks.
Ho bio: http://bakerinstitute.org/experts/vivian-ho.
Founded in 1993, Rice University's Baker Institute ranks among the top 15 university-affiliated think tanks in the world. As a premier nonpartisan think tank, the institute conducts research on domestic and foreign policy issues with the goal of bridging the gap between the theory and practice of public policy. The institute's strong track record of achievement reflects the work of its endowed fellows, Rice University faculty scholars and staff, coupled with its outreach to the Rice student body through fellow-taught classes — including a public policy course — and student leadership and internship programs. Learn more about the institute at http://www.bakerinstitute.org or on the institute's blog, http://blogs.chron.com/bakerblog.
The Episcopal Health Foundation is a new entity established through the 2013 sale of the St. Luke's Episcopal Health System to Catholic Health Initiatives. The Foundation supports the work of the Episcopal Diocese of Texas and has assets of $1 billion. The mission of the Foundation is to advance the Kingdom of God with specific focus on human health and well-being through grants, research, and initiatives in support of the work of the Diocese. Episcopal Health Foundation embraces the World Health Organization's broad, holistic definition of health: a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease.
Survey: Number of Texans without health insurance drops under Affordable Care Act
2014-09-03
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
Tree frogs speed up their life cycle when becoming lunch
2014-09-03
Think again if you've always believed that events in the life cycle of animals happen consistently, almost rigidly, as part of the natural rhythm of nature. Studies by Sinlan Poo and David Bickford of the National University of Singapore, Singapore, show that Mother Nature is much more flexible than you might think. In a paper in Springer's journal Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, the researchers describe how Hansen's tree frog (Chiromantis hansenae) speeds up its life cycle to hatch earlier once its eggs are preyed upon.
Hansen's tree frog is found in Thailand and ...
UTHealth researchers gain insights into severe form of dwarfism
2014-09-03
HOUSTON – (Sept. 3, 2014) – A better understanding of the pathology of a severe form of dwarfism as well as a possible window of treatment have been discovered by researchers at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth).
The preclinical research was published in a recent issue of the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research.
Pseudoachondroplasia (PSACH) is a disorder that affects the cells in the growth plate, resulting in dwarfism, limb deformities, joint pain and early onset osteoarthritis. Children with PSACH show no signs of it at birth. Slowing ...
UCLA-led study identifies genetic factors involved in pediatric ulcerative colitis
2014-09-03
UCLA researchers were part of a team that has discovered the interplay of several genetic factors that may be involved in the development of early-onset ulcerative colitis, a severe type of inflammatory bowel disease.
The early research findings in mice suggest possible new targets for prevention and treatment strategies to address the inflammation generated by early-onset ulcerative colitis. The rare disease affects infants and young children and can lead to early development of colon cancer and an increased risk of liver damage.
Scientists from the David Geffen School ...
Are rising health care costs inevitable?
2014-09-03
New Rochelle, NY, September 3, 2014–If continuing increases in health care costs are inevitable, as some economists predict, is it possible for health care delivery reform to succeed in reducing the overall burden of health care expenditures on the U.S. economy? According to the results of a new study, the focus should shift from cost control to improving utilization rates and quality outcomes, as described in detail in an article in Population Health Management, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the Population ...
Lowering coal-fired power plant emissions may have saved 1,700 lives in 1 year
2014-09-03
After scoring a Supreme Court victory this spring, the Environmental Protection Agency can move forward with its strategy to cut air pollution from coal-fired power plants in several states — and new research suggests the impact could be lifesaving. Scientists assessed the effects of one state's prescient restrictions on plant emissions in a report in the ACS journal Environmental Science & Technology. They estimated that the state's legislation prevented about 1,700 premature deaths in 2012.
Jacqueline MacDonald Gibson and Ya-Ru Li explain that the U.S. has been working ...
'Drink responsibly' messages in alcohol ads promote products, not public health
2014-09-03
Alcohol industry magazine ads reminding consumers to "drink responsibly" or "enjoy in moderation" fail to convey basic public health information, according to a new study from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
A report on the research, published in the September issue of Drug and Alcohol Dependence, analyzed all alcohol ads that appeared in U.S. magazines from 2008 to 2010 to determine whether messages about responsibility define responsible drinking or provide clear warnings about the risks associated with alcohol consumption.
According to the study, ...
Live from inside a battery
2014-09-03
Mobile phones, digital cameras, camcorders, notebooks: They all run on lithium-ion batteries. These are characterized by high energy densities while remaining small and light enough to be used in portable devices. "A lithium-ion battery can store three to four times the energy of a comparably sized nickel-cadmium battery," explains Dr. habil. Ralph Gilles, scientist at the Neutron Source Heinz Maier-Leibnitz (FRM II). Even temperature fluctuations and longer-term storage do not pose problems for lithium-ion batteries.
These advantages make lithium-ion batteries a key ...
Rising risk of failed seasons as climate change puts pressure on Africa's farmers
2014-09-03
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (2 September 2014)—Small-scale family farmers across Africa— already struggling to adapt to rapidly rising temperatures and more erratic rains—risk being overwhelmed by the pace and severity of climate change, according to the 2014 African Agriculture Status Report (AASR).The analysis, prepared by the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), with contributions from several African scholars, provides the most comprehensive review to date of how climate change will affect Africa's smallholder farmers and highlights the most promising paths to ...
Why HIV patients develop dementia
2014-09-03
Since the introduction of the combination anti-retroviral therapy (cART) in the mid-90s, the life expectancy of HIV patients has significantly improved. As a result, long-term complications are becoming more relevant: almost every second HIV patient is affected by neurocognitive disorders, which can lead to dementia. It has not as yet been fully understood how these disorders occur. Researchers from Bochum have now successfully demonstrated that infected cells activate specific immune cells in a patient's brain, which subsequently display harmful behaviour and lead to the ...
A fix to our cell-phone waste problem?
2014-09-03
When it comes to cell phones, the world is stunningly wasteful. Customers will buy more than 1.8 billion new ones by the end of this year only to abandon almost half of them to drawers, and they'll recycle a mere 3 percent of them. But creative and enterprising efforts are underway to reverse the seemingly unstoppable tide, says an article in Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), the weekly news magazine of the American Chemical Society.
Alex Scott, a senior editor at C&EN, notes that there is much to be recovered and re-used from a cell phone. An average mobile contains ...