New findings from the Minnesota Health Access Study (MNHA) show mixed results for health insurance coverage in the state in 2023.
The Minnesota Department of Health's Health Economics Program (HEP) recently released a new summary showing that the percentage of uninsured Minnesotans will drop to just 3.8% in 2023. Compared to 2021, there are approximately 11,000 fewer Minnesotans who are uninsured. HEP Program Director Stefan Gildemeister believes there are many factors that contribute to Minnesota's historically high insurance coverage rates.
“I think we have a pretty strong employer-based insurance system,” Gildemeister said. “It's kind of eroded somewhat over time, but it's still kind of the cornerstone of state coverage. Free or subsidized coverage is kind of the second element. The third thing is, I It may be that we are just in a fairly strong economy and labor market, and that employers are trying to attract employees through non-wage benefits such as wage benefits and health insurance coverage.
Due to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, some coronavirus-related care has been made free and certain financial protections and insurance coverages have been established for individuals. As a new normal emerges and many protections are allowed to expire, you might imagine that health insurance coverage would decline, but that hasn't been the case in Minnesota. Gildemeister believes the main reason was to protect eligible Minnesotans from losing their insurance.
“Maintaining Medicaid eligibility was the biggest factor,” he explained. “I don't think what we're seeing now is that things will change significantly in that at the end of 2023 the redetermination of eligibility has begun, but this process will ensure that most people will not be eligible. We’ve been really successful in making sure that people who have eligibility remaining can continue to participate in the program.”
Although the number of Minnesotans without health insurance may decline, the percentage of Minnesotans without health care due to cost in 2023 will increase from just over 20% in 2021 to 20% in 2021. This increased significantly to 24.5%. 2023. And about a quarter of Minnesotans feel unsatisfied with the coverage their insurance provides.
“This is not new information,” Gildemeister added. “Health care for Minnesotans is expensive at both the individual and system levels. This results in high and rising health care costs that impact individual coverage and access to health care services. There are multiple reasons for this: costs are difficult for the system to understand and are difficult to predict, and the actual costs individuals pay in providing services may be deductible. or because other forms of cost sharing are prohibitive in individual circumstances.”
The conclusions of the 2023 Minnesota Health Access Study show encouraging signs, but also some caveats for the Minnesota Department of Health.
“Medicaid coverage is very strong, but people may not be ready or able to cycle off the program and find full-time employer coverage or individual market coverage. We're starting to see cases where that is the case,” Gildemeister said. “People are experiencing major disruptions in insurance coverage. And then there's the access-to-care component as well as the disparities that we continue to see within the state.”
MNHA is implemented as a partnership between the Minnesota Department of Health and the State Healthcare Access Data Assistance Center at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. You can read the study here.
