Public Health Insurance
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The Impact on Low Income Individual

Medicaid is the U.S.’s primary public health insurance program designed to provide health coverage for low-income children and families who lack access to private health insurance because of their limited finances, health status, or severe physical, mental health, intellectual, or developmental disabilities1. Currently, 1 in every 5 Americans uses Medicaid as their primary form of insurance. This means that as of 2015 over 65 million Americans, by guidelines of the department of health and human service, live on or below the federal poverty line 2. Although those numbers may seem large, former guidelines for Medicaid have left a large portion of the low-income population excluded from coverage and uninsured. Currently, adults under age 65, in nearly 25 states, no matter how low their income, are ineligible for Medicaid unless they are disabled or pregnant. As a solution to this problem the Supreme Court passed The Affordable Care Act (ACA), which would provide an expansion of Medicaid to millions of low-income, uninsured adults who were previously excluded. However the choice to expand remains a state option. While many states have chosen to move forward with the expansion, many have either opted out or lie in debate. One of the major arguments against the expansion of Medicaid lies in the debate of whether “Medicaid is worse than no coverage at all 3.” My paper will examine the affects of public healthcare on low-income individuals by answering the following questions: 1. Is Medicaid better than being uninsured? 2. Do children with public health insurance have the same access to preventative and primary care as the privately insured? 3.Are pediatric specialists more wiling to accept privately insured children over the public insured?
Medicaid, or