new findings from the Minnesota Health Access survey or mnh show mixed results regarding health insurance coverage within the state during 2023 our reporter Matthew Freeman spoke with someone from the Minnesota Department of Health to unravel this mixed bag the Minnesota Department of Health's Health economics program or Hep shared a new brief saying the percent of minnesotans without insurance in 20123 fell to just 3.8% about 11,000 fewer motans compared to 2021 Stefan gildemeister the program
director for he believes there are a number of factors that affect Minnesota's historic High coverage rates I I think we have a fairly strong employer based Insurance system has been eroding over time uh somewhat but it's still sort of the foundation for insurance coverage in the state free or subsidized insurance coverage is sort of the second Factor the third might be that we're just in a fairly strong economy and labor market where employers are looking to attract staff through wage benefits
and non-wage benefits such as insur health insurance coverage because of the covid-19 pandemic some covid related care was free and certain financial and coverage protections were in place for individuals with a new normal emerging and many protections allowed to lapse you would imagine HealthCare coverage would drop but in the state of Minnesota that wasn't the case gild Meister believes protections to prevent eligible motans from losing coverage was the main reason why maintaining the RO goals
of eligibility for Medicaid was the single biggest contributing factor I think what we're looking at right now at the end of 20123 there hasn't been much of a change to that picture in that redetermination of Eligibility has begun but the process has really succeeded in making sure that most people who remain eligible can stay on the program there may be a decrease to the number of motans without healthc care coverage but the percentage of motans who went without some type of Healthcare in 2020
3 due to cost increased quite a bit from just over 20% in 2021 to 24.5% in 2023 as well as about a quarter of minnesotans not feeling satisfied with the protection their insurance provided this is not new information a healthc care for minnesotans is costly both at the individual level but also at the system level so we have high health care cost and we have rising healthare cost and that affects uh individuals access to insurance coverage and healthcare service now there are multiple reasons f
or that it could be because the system is difficult to understand the cost are hard to predict or the actual cost that individuals pay at the point of service where they are maybe accountable for deductible or other forms of cost sharing are prohibitive in in people's individual circumstances so conclusions from the 2023 mnh survey show promising signs but also some cautions for the Minnesota Department of Health Medicaid coverage is pretty strong but we're beginning to see cases is where people
cycle off the program and maybe are not quite ready to find or afford full-time employer coverage or individual Market coverage people experience real disruption in insurance coverage and then there's also the component of access to care as well as the disparities that we continue to see in the state reporting for Lakeland news I'm Matthew Freeman the m& is a partnership between the Minnesota Department of Health and the University of Minnesota's School of Public Health State Health Access Data
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