Nearly 600,000 residents of the four-county Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area will be eligible for subsidies on the health insurance exchanges in 2014, according to an analysis by Families USA.
About 2.6 million Texans will be eligible for private coverage assistance, according to the study. Because Texas has chosen not to expand Medicaid, 420,000 Texans could receive help on the exchanges who would have been eligible for Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
The ACA will require that most Americans will have to buy health insurance next year. They will qualify for the exchanges based on income and whether their employers provide affordable insurance plans. Those eligible for Medicare and Medicaid cannot participate in the exchanges.
The analysis showed that about 88 percent of eligible Texans are employed. More than half of those eligible annually earn 200-400 percent of the federal poverty guidelines, or $47,100 to $94,200 for a family of four. That means financial assistance is reaching well into middle-class Texans. Subsidies will be on a sliding scale based on income.
In Dallas County, nearly 292,000 residents will be eligible for the exchanges. The estimates for other local counties were about 61,000 in Collin, 55,000 in Denton and 191,000 in Tarrant and Parker.
More than half of the eligible Dallas County residents are Hispanic, compared with only about 1 out of 4 in Collin and Denton counties and 1 out of 3 in Tarrant/Parker. In each county, more than 1 out of 3 eligible participants are adults ages 18-34.
“The tax credit subsidies are a game-changer: They will make health coverage affordable for huge numbers of uninsured families who would have been priced out of the health coverage and care they need,” said Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA, in a statement.
Steve Jacob is editor of D Healthcare Daily and author of the book Health Care in 2020: Where Uncertain Reform, Bad Habits, Too Few Doctors and Skyrocketing Costs Are Taking Us. He can be reached at [email protected].
