Public News Service

By: Dan Heyman

A new report says expanding Medicaid is really paying off for rural West Virginians.

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It found expanding Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act has cut the rate of low-income, rural West Virginia adults without health coverage by 60 percent.

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Study co-author Joan Alker, executive director of the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families, says that’s a big deal. “Having health insurance, having this Medicaid coverage, is really important in these rural areas, which are already struggling with higher rates of unemployment and poverty,” she states. “If you layer on top of that a higher uninsured rate, it really puts these folks in rural areas and small towns at a disadvantage.” Nationally, the study found that small towns and rural areas in expansion states saw three times the decline in low-income adults without coverage than in states that did not expand Medicaid. And some states that didn’t opt to expand saw their uninsured rate increase.

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Read more here.