Census data released Wednesday show that 8.8 million people gained health insurance in 2014, the first year of ObamaCare’s coverage expansion.
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Wednesday’s report was all the more remarkable because the proportion of Americans who had no health insurance had been stable from 2008 to 2013. But after plans became available in the marketplaces for those without employer-sponsored coverage, the uninsured rated dropped to 10.4 percent of the population past year.
Earlier this year, the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index reported that Connecticut’s uninsured rate dropped to 5 percent during the first six months of 2015.
In the year that Obamacare took effect, the number of people without health insurance dropped sharply, across the United States and in Connecticut, which has one of the lowest rates of uninsured people in the country.
In Wisconsin, the uninsured rate decreased from 9.1% to 7.3%, a drop from 518,000 uninsured people to 418,000. But there’s still a sizable chunk of the population that has high rates of uninsurance: older millennials, a.k.a. the “young invincibles”, a nickname that refers to their supposedly hubristic attitude that they don’t need health insurance because they’ll never get sick.
The number of uninsured would be 41 million people in 2025, 14 million higher than if the Affordable Care Act continues unaltered. The rate of direct purchasers increased by 3.2 percent in 2014.
The other big difference from the health law was reflected in Medicaid, the federal-state program that states could choose to expand in order to cover more people who in the past weren’t poor enough for the program, but still couldn’t afford insurance. Labor-force participation rates are expected to remain close to their current level, the lowest since the late 1970s, as tens of thousands of baby boomers reach retirement age every day.
“Having health insurance is better than not having coverage, as several research studies have shown”, Zarr, a Washington, D.C.-based pediatrician, said.
More than 1,000 people showed up for a free health fair clinic at the Dallas Convention Center Saturday morning, September 29, 2012.
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“The average deductible – i.e. before insurance kicks in – for families with popular silver plans in 2015 is estimated to be $6,010, and out-of-pocket costs for copayments and deductibles, after premium payments, for a family of four with an income of about $60,000 per year can be as high as $13,200”, he said. The expansion of Medicaid in most states and the availability of subsidies to purchase private insurance through exchanges has made coverage more accessible for millions of Americans.
