Medicaid enrollees much less likely to get coronavirus vaccine; distrust, low income, education, media cited

Medicaid beneficiaries are getting the coronavirus vaccination at lower rates than the general population, and experts worry about the trend because the poorest Americans tend to have worse health outcomes and a shorter lifespan, Sandhya Raman reports for Roll Call.

The more immediate concern is that the phenomenon is a big obstacle to thwarting the virus. For example, more than a third of Kentucky's population is covered by Medicaid, and "only 27 percent of those eligible have received at least one dose of the vaccine, compared to about 51% of Kentuckians overall, according to the state Cabinet for Health and Family Services," Deborah Yetter reports for the Courier Journal in Louisville.

Raman reports, "The reasons why vaccination is lower for this population are complex but could include economic barriers like lack of access to transportation and child care or less flexible work schedules," Raman reports. "A nationwide poll also showed higher levels of vaccine hesitancy among lower-income individuals." Low income correlates with low education and low health literacy.

Some of the insurance-company subsidiaries that manage Medicaid patients for state governments are offering $100 gift cards and other incentives, and "I don't know how much sway some insurance company's going to have over the phone. It usually takes someone you know to persuade you," said Dr. John Jones, who treats Medicaid patients in southeastern Kentucky,

In that area, Jones told Yetter, "There's just a distrust of outsiders in general," he told Yetter, and most vaccine-hesitant people would be more likely to listen to someone they know. He said vaccine demand from his patients has dwindled in recent weeks. "Often, they report anecdotal information shared by others or seen on social media, such as one patient who cited a case of a healthy young adult dying after being vaccinated, a report Jones said he could not verify," Yetter reports, quoting him: "Some of it's directly linked to social media. The stories, there's no way to confirm them . . . Sometimes, they refuse to talk about it."