I spoke with 3 people this week who simply could not comprehend the absolute economic destitution that people have to demonstrate in order to qualify for Medicaid health coverage as an adult in AL. Spoke with a journalist, an academic and a politician. Nobody could believe it.

As a non-disabled, non-pregnant adult, primary caretaker of one child, the parent must make less than $3,108/year to qualify for Medicaid coverage; with 3 in the house, it’s $3,912; etc. There is more help available when you reach $17k+/year (poverty line), but not before...

And non-parents/caregivers are not qualified to get Medicaid coverage at any income level. This is why we still have 300k+ people without health insurance.

We are fortunate that our state has more generous coverage limits for kids via AllKids, and that is something to celebrate. Coverage limits for pregnancy are also more generous. Unfortunately, in normal times, new moms lose that full health coverage 60 days post-partum.

This is how we end up with the extreme racial disparities in infant and maternal mortality rates. Alabama, we can and should do better.

Almost half of people in the health coverage gap in our state are people of color, while people of color are only 34% of our total population. Expanding coverage to those adults would have a tremendous impact on addressing persistent racial health disparities.

This is summarized in our Medicaid Matters report with a ton of charts and images to explain the data. It looks at the tremendous need, but more importantly, the tremendous potential for changes that would improve our overall health, workforce and economy. https://www.alarise.org/resources/medicaid-matters-charting-the-course-to-a-healthier-alabama/