According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) the share of working-age adults in America who lack health insurance dropped by more than four percentage points in 2014. That marks the largest percentage drop in the uninsured rate in any year since the CDC first began collecting survey data on uninsured rates in 1997.
The CDC report is based on a health survey of 111,682 American adults. In 2014, roughly 31.7 million people, or 16.3 percent of U.S. adults under age 65 lacked health insurance, compared to 20.4 percent who were uninsured in 2013. Not surprisingly, in states that accepted the federal Medicaid expansion uninsured rates were significantly lower. In Medicaid expansion states the uninsured rate plummeted to 13.3 percent, compared to a 19.3 percent uninsured rate in states that failed to expand Medicaid.
In 2014, Hawaii, the state where President Barack Obama was born, fittingly had the lowest uninsured rate at a mere 2.5 percent. The highest uninsured rates were in Oklahoma and Texas, two states where conservative politicians fiercely resisted Medicaid expansion. Both states had uninsured rates of 21.5 percent.
Ironically 8 of the 10 states that saw the largest drops in uninsured rates were red states in the South and West that did not vote for Barack Obama in 2012. Republicans may not like Obamacare, but Obamacare likes them.
The CDC’s findings come at a time when the Supreme Court is deliberating over whether or not to invalidate federal health care subsidies for 6.4 million Americans who benefit from the expanded affordable coverage made possible by Obamacare. How the court will rule remains a mystery, but there is no mystery about whether or not Obama’s signature health care law is accomplishing the goal of extending health coverage to more Americans. The verdict is in. Obamacare is working.
The CDC’s survey results confirm what other surveys have also verified. Obamacare has reduced the uninsured rate in America significantly. A Gallup Healthways survey released in the first quarter of 2015 has shown that the trend has extended into this year as well. One of the expressed goals of Obamacare was to reduce the percentage of Americans who lacked health insurance because they were unable to afford coverage. On that measure, Obamacare has been an unmistakable success.
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