NPR Community Ideas Station

By: Megan Pauly

The figure has been used over and over: nearly 400,000 Virginians in the Medicaid gap. It’s estimated that if the General Assembly agrees on Medicaid expansion – about 300,000 of those in the gap will sign up for coverage. But who are those individuals exactly?

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While the House hasn’t worked out all of the details about how this would work, Joan Alker with the Center for Children and Families at Georgetown University says they’re barriers likely to result in people losing coverage. “The reality is and we know this from a lot of experience working to reduce the number of uninsured children is that the more hoops folks have to jump through the harder it gets,” Alker said. While House Democrats like John Bell don’t love the idea of a work requirement, they signed off on it – citing a bipartisan spirit in changing tge cutoff age for the requirement from 65 to 55.

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