A new White House administration report presses states to expand Medicaid coverage in order to help Latino residents.
The new report finds that one in four uninsured people eligible for the Health Insurance Marketplace are Latino.
Of the 41.3 million eligible uninsured people, 10.2 million people are Latino. Latinos are uninsured at a much higher rate than the rest of the population. And more than half live in California or Texas. The five states with the greatest number of eligible uninsured Latinos are:
-- California 2.8 million (28 percent of all eligible uninsured Latinos),
-- Texas 2.5 million (24 percent),
-- Florida 1.1 million (10 percent),
-- New York 0.5 million (5 percent), and
-- Arizona 0.4 million (4 percent).
The findings were part of the Department of Health and Human Services report that presses states to expand Medicaid coverage under the Affordable Care Act. If all states did so, the agency contends 95 percent of uninsured Latinos may qualify for lower health care costs under programs such as Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, or tax credits to help with the cost of premiums in the Marketplace.