Who Enrolled In DRM?
When DRM enrollment closed on 31 January 2002, nearly 350,000 people had gained health insurance coverage through this extraordinary program. We sponsored several efforts to sketch a preliminary portrait of those who applied, including a survey of nearly 3,000 applicants by selected managed care plans and community-based enrollers, a CDF survey of nearly 700 applicants and site observations at twenty-two HRA Medicaid offices in January 2002, and a joint focus-group project with the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured. Preliminary findings show that DRM applicants who came to managed care plans and community organizations to enroll during December 2001 were a diverse group. Only about one in four spoke English as their primary language, and most reported that they had not applied for Medicaid in the past.4 Nearly one-third of that group said they hadn’t tried before because they had been covered through their job or because their financial circumstances had recently deterior
