5 Million Essential and Front-line Workers Get Health Coverage Through Medicaid

With millions more Americans now jobless or experiencing sharp income losses due to the COVID-19 economic crisis, the need for Medicaid coverage is growing. Meanwhile, a major state budget crisis has already driven some states to cut Medicaid and other health programs. With states beginning to exhaust their options to avoid budget cuts, more states will likely make harmful Medicaid cuts unless federal policymakers provide additional Medicaid funds for them and maintain strong protections for Medicaid enrollees. Some 5 million Medicaid enrollees who work in essential or front-line industries would be among those who stand to lose if states cut Medicaid or if beneficiary protections are weakened, our analysis of Census data shows.

Medicaid is a crucial source of health coverage for workers in essential or front-line industries — people with jobs that may require them to show up for work during the pandemic regardless of stay-at-home orders or other restrictions, such as hospital workers, home health aides, food manufacturers, grocery store workers, farm workers, pharmaceutical manufacturers and pharmacy workers, bus drivers and truck drivers, and warehouse workers. Many low-income workers in these jobs are not offered job-based coverage or can’t afford the premiums for it.

Using Census Bureau data, we estimate the number of workers in these types of jobs enrolled in Medicaid in 2018, the most recent year for which data are available. As explained in more detail here, we categorize people as working in an essential or front-line industry if they work in specific industry categories. The definition is imperfect in that it undoubtedly includes some workers who were furloughed or are working remotely while excluding others who have been required to be physically present at work during the pandemic. But, we believe, it provides a reasonable window into health coverage for workers in jobs that potentially put them on the front lines of the pandemic.

Share Chart on Facebook Share Chart on Twitter

Chart

About 5 million people in essential or front-line industries are enrolled in Medicaid, we estimate, including nearly 1.8 million people working in front-line health care services and 1.6 million in other front-line and essential services including transportation, waste management, and child care. (See figure.) Nationwide, 10 percent of all — and nearly 1 of every 3 low-income — essential or front-line workers are enrolled in Medicaid.

These workers are more than twice as likely to have Medicaid coverage — and 42 percent less likely to be uninsured — if they live in one of the 37 states and the District of Columbia that have expanded Medicaid to low-income adults. (See table.) Another 650,000 essential or front-line workers who are currently uninsured would be eligible for Medicaid coverage if the remaining states adopted the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion, we estimate.

The stakes are high for Medicaid as the President and Congress negotiate another economic relief bill. Unfortunately, the Senate Republican proposal doesn’t include additional increases in the federal share of Medicaid costs (the federal medical assistance percentage, or FMAP), which states need to avoid harmful cuts. And Republicans may seek to weaken important maintenance-of-effort protections, enacted in the Families First Coronavirus Response Act in March, that prevent states from cutting Medicaid eligibility or taking away people’s coverage during the public health crisis.

A final relief bill that weakens these protections or doesn’t provide additional Medicaid funding could hurt millions of essential and front-line workers who are sacrificing to help the nation through the pandemic.