The open enrollment period for health insurance is upon us and while Obamacare has been very controversial, a new study by the personal finance website Wallethub shows that it’s helped.
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For the second year in a row, WalletHub’s analysts drew upon the most reliable data to estimate the rates of uninsured pre- and post-Obamacare for the 50 states and the District of Columbia.
As previous research has revealed, states that expanded Medicaid had lower average uninsured rates-in this case 9.35 percent for expansion states and 12.74 percent for non-expansion states in 2014.
Nationwide, the number of uninsured people dropped 3.8 percent.
The uninsured rate for higher-income households is 72.72 percent lower than that for lower-income households.
Florida’s 16.57 percent earned it the distinction of coming in with the third highest rate of people who are not covered by health insurance.
The analysis also compared “red” to “blue” states based on their 2012 presidential election voting records, finding that predominantly Republican states had a higher average rank of uninsured than mainly Democratic states. The 2014 rate is 11.7 percent, according to WalletHub.
In light of the aforementioned data, to what extent is the ACA essentially triumphing in slashing the number of uninsured adults?
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“It is time for Florida to quit being an outlier and put significant effort into reducing the number of uninsured children”, he said. “Yet the uninsured rate would have dropped even further, if all states had instituted not only the ACA’s private market provisions, but also its Medicaid expansion”, Hermer claims.
