JAMA Internal Medicine published a review of the impact of New York state’s Marriage Equality Act on insurance coverage for same sex partners on Friday – just in time for the momentous Supreme Court decision confirming that states can no longer discriminate against gays who wish to get married. The researcher used data from the US Census “American Community Survey,” which has a 97% completion rate because the Census Department doesn’t take “no answer” for an answer.
The results are clear. Marriage equality has led to far more coverage of same sex partners, even while coverage of opposite sex partners did not rise. (This is before the Affordable Care Act took effect in 2014).
Not only that, the portion of male same sex partners who were insured by Medicaid fell from 3% to 1.4%, a 53% drop. (The absolute drop is larger for women in a same sex relationship, although the percentage drop for this group is "only" 26%.) Marriage equality had the dual advantages of increasing access to employer sponsored health insurance and decreasing state Medicaid rolls.
Note that y axis is truncated here!
