With all the storm and controversy and still uncertain fate of Obamacare, I found this chart which helps visualize the actual big picture effects of the law.
The chart shows trends in the percentage of Americans with health insurance from the introduction of the Medicare and Medicaid through the roll out of Obamacare. The chart is from a speech by Jason Furman, Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors.
As you can see, the story is fairly straightforward in percentage terms. About a quarter of Americans lacked health care coverage before the introduction of Medicare and Medicaid. That dropped the number down to about 12 percent by the early 1970s. Then it started to track back up to around 15% and then finally spiking to a historical high during the Great Recession.
Since the introduction of Obamacare it has either hit or gone below the historic low reached just after the introduction of the Great Society era health care programs.
Here are the sources the White House lists for the numbers …
Source: CEA analysis of National Health Interview Survey, Cohen et al. (2009), Klemm (2000), and CMS (2009); ASPE analysis of NHIS and Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index data through March 4, 2015.
Note: Data are quarterly starting in 2014:Q1. Data for earlier years are generally either annual or bi-annual. The NHIS is the best tool for studying trends in insurance coverage, but because NHIS data are not currently available after 2014:Q3, Gallup data are used to extrapolate the uninsured rate through 2015:Q1.
