It would be nice to find out there was some mistake in a Gallup poll released last week.

State officials are questioning the results of the Gallup Well-Being Index that indicated Kansas was the only state in the nation that had seen a significant increase in the number of uninsured residents in the last year. According to Gallup poll, the percentage of uninsured Kansans rose from 12.5 percent in 2013 to 17.6 percent by the middle of this year. Kansas was one of just five states that didn’t record a decline in the number of uninsured. The number of uninsured remained flat in Massachusetts and Utah. Virginia saw an increase of 0.4 of a percentage point, and Iowa had an increase of 0.6 of a point — while Kansas had an increase of 5.1 percentage points, giving the state the seventh highest rate of uninsured residents in the country.

The largest declines in uninsured population came in states that had both accepted Medicaid expansion funds and established their own state exchanges to implement the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare. At the top of that list were Arkansas with a decline of 10.1 percentage points and Kentucky with a decline of 8.5 points. The combined statistics for all 21 states that expanded Medicaid and formed their own exchanges showed an overall decline of 4 percentage points in uninsured residents.

The other 29 states, including Kansas, either rejected Medicaid expansion, didn’t form their own exchanges or both. Even that group had a combined reduction in uninsured population of 2.2 percentage points.

So what’s the matter with Kansas? Why is it so out of line even among other states that are taking a similar stand on implementing the ACA?

Kansas, which rejected both expanded Medicaid and a state exchange, also has some of the most restrictive requirements in the nation to qualify for Medicaid assistance. According to an April 2014 report by the Kansas Health Institute, Kansas parents must earn no more than 38 percent of the federal poverty level to qualify for Medicaid. That’s $9,063 a year for a family of four. In most cases, childless adults who are younger than 65 and not disabled do not qualify for assistance even if they have no income at all. The KHI report cites estimates from the Kansas Department of Health and Environment that accepting the federal Medicaid expansion would provide coverage for about 151,000 Kansans.

With those factors in mind, Kansas health policy experts said they weren’t surprised that the state would see an increase in its uninsured population. However, the size of the increase caused some officials to be skeptical of the poll results. Even Insurance Commissioner Sandy Praeger, an advocate of the ACA, told a Kansas City newspaper that the poll number “appears to be an anomaly that needs more review. To have the uninsured jump that much in one year would be unprecedented.”

Let’s hope Praeger is right to wonder about the poll numbers. The Gallup figures are a highly unflattering reflection on the state. It’s important to find out exactly how accurate those figures are and take the appropriate action to either correct the poll figures or address their underlying cause.