A surprising number of military veterans don't have health insurance.

I'm David Brancaccio. Veterans Day is tomorrow.

Federal offices, many other government facilities, businesses and schools schools observe it today, so check.

At this time we look at a report from the Urban Institute, a non-profit research organization,

that finds hundreds of thousands of working-age veterans are uninsured and it offers a

solution involving Medicaid.

Marketplace is Nancy Marshall Genser has this.

Many veterans get health insurance through the departments of defense or

veterans affairs, but there are restrictions on eligibility and some veterans live

a long way from a VA facility. Older veterans can enroll in Medicare, but Jessica Banthin at the Urban Institute's

Health Policy Center says,

A little under 5% of veterans below age 65 remain without coverage.

That works out to around 400,000 people.

Now, some veterans enroll in Medicaid,

health insurance for low-income Americans, all but 10 states have expanded Medicaid, making it easier to qualify.

Banthin says in 2021, slightly more than half of those younger uninsured veterans lived in states that did not expand Medicaid, like Texas.

Dr. Adam Gaffney teaches at Harvard Medical School and has studied this.

In the state of Texas, we found that about 1 in 10, about 10% of veterans

were uninsured.

Gaffney says Medicaid would provide a crucial lifeline for veterans in the states that haven't expanded it. In addition to Texas, they are Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. I'm Nancy Marshall Ganser for Marketplace.

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