SEATTLE (AP) - Washington state has gone from having about 14 percent of its population without health insurance to 8.5 percent since federal health care reform took effect.
State Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler told a Congressional subcommittee on Wednesday that’s the lowest rate of uninsured people in Washington since 1987.
Kreidler was testifying before the House Ways and Means Committee’s Sub-Committee on Oversight. His main message: health care reform has been a success in Washington state.
He gives a lot of the credit for this success to the decision to expand Medicaid eligibility, which has added more than half a million adults to insurance rolls. He says that decision has helped create a stable insurance market and is one of the reasons individual insurance rates have been relatively stable in Washington.
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