WASHINGTON – Partial repeal of the Affordable Care Act through a budget reconciliation bill could cause nearly 30 million Americans to lose health insurance and 9.3 million to lose government subsidies to help them purchase marketplace coverage, according to a new analysis.
The additional 29.8 million uninsured — 22.5 million from the elimination of the Medicaid expansion alone — would push the national total of the uninsured to 58.7 million in 2019, according to the analysis by researchers at the Urban Institute.
That's more than the 50 million who lacked coverage in 2009 before the health law was passed, said John Holahan, a senior fellow at Urban Institute and co-author of the report.
More than four out of five of the newly uninsured would come from working families; 56 percent would be non-Hispanic whites.
Coverage losses would be greatest in the 31 states and the District of Columbia that expanded eligibility for Medicaid under the ACA, the report found.
In those states, the number of uninsured would rise from 14 million to 32.5 million. Non-expansion states would see an increase from 14.9 million uninsured to 26.2 million.
California would lead all expansion states with nearly 4.9 million people losing coverage while nearly 1 million would become uninsured in Pennsylvania, 775,000 in Washington state and 486,000 in Kentucky.
Among non-expansion states, the uninsured would grow to more than 2.5 million in Texas and more than 1 million in Georgia and Florida. More than 500,000 would lose coverage in Missouri and more than 200,000 in Mississippi and Kansas.