My understanding of Medicaid is that while eligibility is determined by federal requirements, it is further determined by the states. So New York might place a higher value on covering births than other states.


If you look online for the number of persons without any form of medical insurance, you still find that in 2004 "45.8 million people were without health insurance coverage, up from 45.0 million people in 2003." Source: Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2004 [PDF] report, page 23.

Investigating what "health insurance coverage" meant in the report, I found this: "The CPS ASEC asks about health insurance coverage in the previous calendar year. The questionnaire asks separate questions about the major types of health insurance and people who answer “no” to each of these questions are then asked to verify that they were, in fact, not covered by any type of health insurance. For the purpose of this report, the Census Bureau broadly classifies health insurance coverage as private or government coverage. Private health insurance is coverage by a plan provided through an employer or union or purchased by an individual from a private company. Government health insurance includes the federal programs Medicare, Medicaid, and military health care; the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP); and individual state health plans.* People were considered “insured” if they were covered by any type of health insurance for part or all of the previous year, and everyone else was considered uninsured."
"* Types of insurance are not mutually exclusive and people may be covered by more than one during the year."
The reader is then referred to Appendix E for more information.

45.8 million people is alot of people without coverage of any sort. It is these Americans who have to decide between healthcare and a roof over their heads, or healthcare and heat, or healthcare and food.