A central goal of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is to significantly reduce the number of uninsured by providing a continuum of affordable coverage options through Medicaid and the Health Insurance Marketplaces. The ACA provided the opportunity for states to expand Medicaid eligibility to those with incomes below 138 percent of the federal poverty line, but 12 states have not expanded as ofAugust 2021.
In 2014, half of all Americans living with HIV were on Medicaid or Medicare and, according to Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF), 14 percent of HIV-positive people had no insurance. Many of the non-expansion states are also those in which HIV is the most concentrated.
As AIDSVu Advisory Committee member Jennifer Kates, Vice President and Director of Global Health & HIV Policy at KFF previously noted, “while insurance coverage alone does not necessarily guarantee access, it is an important step in linking more people with HIV to regular care and treatment, which in turn helps to stop the spread of the HIV epidemic.”
AIDSVu has created a series of graphics showing KFF’s Medicaid expansion maps alongside AIDSVu’s prevalence and new diagnoses maps at the county and state level.
Source: Kaiser Family Foundation Interactive map: https://www.kff.org/medicaid/issue-brief/status-of-state-medicaid-expansion-decisions-interactive-map/
AIDSVu Interactive map: https://map.aidsvu.org/map
