Despite Republicans’ resistance to the federal health law, the percentage of Americans without health insurance in 2017 remained the same as during the last year of the Obama administration, according to a closely watched report from the Census Bureau released Wednesday.
However, the uninsured rate did rise in 14 states. It was not immediately clear why, because the states varied dramatically by location, politics and whether they had expanded Medicaid under the federal health law. Those states included Texas, Florida, Vermont, Minnesota and Oregon.
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The uninsured rate fell in three states: California, New York and Louisiana.
An estimated 8.8 percent of the population, or about 28.5 million people, did not have health insurance coverage at any point in 2017. That was slightly higher than the 28.1 million in 2016, but did not affect the uninsured rate. The difference was not statistically significant, according to the Census report.
About 17 percent of Americans were uninsured in 2010, the year the Affordable Care Act was enacted.
The Census numbers are considered the gold standard for tracking who has insurance because the survey samples are so large.
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(Courtesy of the U.S. Census Bureau)
Analysts credit the health law with helping drive down the number of uninsured. But also a factor: The proportion of people without insurance typically falls as unemployment rates decline. That’s because more people can get health coverage at work or can better afford buying insurance on their own.
The nation’s unemployment rate has generally been falling since before 2011 and was 4.1 percent for the last quarter of 2017, the lowest level since before the Great Recession began in December 2007.
Critics of the health law said the report emphasized its deficiencies. “Today’s report is another reminder that Obamacare has priced insurance out of the reach of millions of working families,” Marie Fishpaw and Doug Badger of the Heritage Foundation said in a statement. “Despite a growing economy and very low unemployment rate, the uninsured rate remains virtually unchanged.”
