A new Census report finds that the uninsured rate continues to shrink since the passage of Obamacare, with only 9.1 percent of Americans reporting not having health insurance in 2015, according to a Census study released on Tuesday. The uninsured rate has decreased by 1.3 percentage points from 2014, the report said.
The report said that the decrease in uninsured rates was driven by both private insurance gains — where the rate in private coverage gained 1.2 percentage points — and by an expansion of government coverage. “[T]the government coverage rate increased by 0.6 percentage points to 37.1 percent,” the report summary said.
The report broke down coverage by a variety of metrics, including by state. It said that “[v]ariation in both the uninsured rate and change in the uninsured rate by state may be related to whether the state expanded Medicaid eligibility beginning in 2014 as part of the Affordable Care Act,” whiling noting that “[b]etween 2014 and 2015, decreases in the uninsured rate were in general greater in expansion states than in non-expansion states.”
The rate of decrease in uninsured rates in expansion states overall was 2.4 percentage points, the report said, while the rate of decrease in non-expansion states was 2.1 percentage points. Furthermore, the percentage of uninsured in expansion states ranged from 2.8 percent (Massachusetts) to 12.3 percent (Nevada) in 2015, while in non-expansions states, it ranged from from 5.7 percent (Wisconsin) to 17.1 percent (Texas).
The report also broke down coverage rates by race, and found that Hispanics made the greatest gains between 2014 and 2015. Uninsured rates for Hispanics decreased by 3.6 percentage points (from 19.9 percent to 16.2 percent). Uninsured rates for Asians decreased by 1.9 percentage points (from 9.3 percent to 7.5 percent), while non-Hispanic Whites saw a 0.9 percentage points reduction (from 7.6 percent to 6.7 percent). Uninsured rates shrunk for blacks by 0.7 percentage points (from 11.8 to 11.1 percent.)
