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Uninsured Rate Drops Below 10 Percent in 2015
More data emerges on Obamacare’s health coverage expansion.
The percentage of uninsured Americans fell below 10 percent in the first quarter of 2015, according to new figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, yet another data point on how many people have gained health coverage under the Affordable Care Act.
Dating back to 1997, the uninsured rate had been hovering between 14 and 16 percent annually before Obamacare’s coverage expansion took effect in 2014. The percentage of uninsured Americans under age 65 fell from 14.4 percent in 2013 to 11.2 percent in 2014, and now 9.2 percent through March 2015, according to the CDC data.
Using the 2014 population estimate for the United States, that is the equivalent of nearly 16.6 million people gaining health insurance from 2013 to March 2015. That roughly aligns with other estimates of how many people have been covered by the health care law.
Significant disparity in coverage remains across ethnicities: 19.6 percent of Hispanics were uninsured in the first quarter of 2015, 10.6 percent of blacks and 6.3 percent of whites. Signing up Hispanics through Obamacare’s insurance marketplaces and Medicaid expansion has been a recurring problem for the Obama administration and states in the first two years of enrollment.
Other indicators tracked with more Americans being covered by insurance. Just 4.4 percent of Americans said they had to forego medical care because of its cost in the first quarter of 2015, down from a height of 6.9 in 2009 and 2010 in the midst of the economic downturn.
( Image via JPC-PROD / Shutterstock.com )
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