Pennsylvania: Woodworker number defined as around 18K (up from my 13K estimate)

In Pennsylvania, the Medicaid "woodworker" effect has been specified as being roughly 18,000 people...which is actually higher than the 13,000+ that I had estimated for PA up until now:

Pennsylvania’s Medicaid enrollment is up by more than 18,000 people since the Oct. 1 launch of the Affordable Care Act’s online health plan marketplaces.

The state's enrollment bump in the program for low-income families and individuals is small, though it coincides with larger jumps being experienced in other Republican-led states. Supporters of the ACA are crediting the 2010 federal health care overhaul with encouraging more uninsured to examine their health coverage options. Subsequently they discover that they were already eligible for state-funded insurance programs.

It’s called the “woodwork” effect — people who may have been eligible for Medicaid or related children’s programs all along only learned of their eligibility during the six-month push to sign Americans up for health insurance.

In other words, they “came out of the woodwork.”

 

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