Medicaid/SCHIP as Primary Source of Health Insurance During the Year

Publication Date: August 2004

Publisher: Library of Congress. Congressional Research Service

Author(s):

Research Area: Health

Type:

Abstract:

Although most Americans receive health insurance through an employer, 40.8 million individuals were enrolled in Medicaid or the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) at some point in 2001, representing 14% of the U.S. population. However, not all of these individuals relied on Medicaid/SCHIP as their primary source of health insurance. Medicaid/SCHIP enrollees are heterogeneous, particularly in terms of the duration of their enrollment and the extent to which they rely on Medicaid/SCHIP as their sole source of coverage. This heterogeneity is best understood by analyzing Medicaid/SCHIP enrollees in a given year as three distinct groups rather than a single group: