Nathan Hanna, We Don't Waste food recovery specialist, organizes donated food into pallets and ships them to customers on October 24, 2022 in Denver, Colorado. More Coloradans reported food insecurity in 2023 than in 2021 as pandemic aid expired and food prices rose. (Photo by Helen H. Richardson/Denver Post)
The percentage of Coloradans who say they are struggling to pay housing or rent has returned to pre-pandemic levels after temporary assistance ended, but the percentage reporting mental health issues continues to rise. There is.
One bright spot in the newly released Colorado Health Access Survey, which collected responses from nearly 10,000 randomly selected households, is that the uninsured rate has fallen to a new low of 4.6% in 2023. was.
But Sara Schmidt, president and CEO of the Colorado Health Institute, said the study was conducted between March and September and included only a few months when the state was excluding residents from Medicaid. This figure may not reflect the current situation, he said.
During the COVID-19 public health emergency, states could not remove most people from Medicaid rolls, but that protection ends in early 2023. Colorado has begun removing residents when the state's Medicaid program cannot verify eligibility and is ineligible. Please do not return proof of eligibility.
“We don't know how many Coloradans who were on Medicaid have found other coverage,” Schmidt said at a press conference Wednesday. “Some people may have lost their coverage.”
However, the loss of protection against the pandemic is already visible in some regions.
The percentage of people who say they are worried about losing a stable place to live in the next two months has rebounded to about the same level as in 2019, at 16.9% of renters and 2.4% of homeowners. expressed that concern. The proportion of renters who say they are worried has increased by more than a third compared to 2021, when the country was under an eviction moratorium in the first half of the year.
Food insecurity, which the survey defines as eating less food because you can't afford it, has increased since before the pandemic, with 11.2% of respondents saying they had experienced it. The food insecurity rate fell to about 8.1% in 2021, in part due to a temporary increase in food aid funding, Schmidt said. In addition to aid returning to normal levels, rising food prices have pushed more people's budgets to the brink, she said.
The mental health of Coloradans is also worse than it was before the pandemic, with 26.2% reporting poor mental health for eight or more days in the past month, said Lindsey Whittington, data and analytics manager at the Colorado Health Research Institute. It is said that there is.
Economic and psychological trends may be linked, the researchers said, as poor mental health was most common among adults under 50.
“We've seen that mental health issues aren't going away even as the pandemic eases,” Whittington said. “We know there are many economic and social stressors that affect adults.”
While most of the news in the 2023 report was not good, some of the steps Colorado and the federal government have taken to help families stay financially viable during the pandemic include food and shelter. demonstrated success in reducing the effects of poverty, such as insecurity. said Whittington.
“We know the policy works,” they said.
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