California’s uninsured rate for health care was halved in the first year of Obamacare, a private study finds.
The uninsured rate was 22 percent prior to open enrollment for the Affordable Care Act in the state, and now stands at 11 percent, the Commonwealth Fund reports.
The private health-care advocate group noted that California “expanded eligibility for Medicaid and pursued an aggressive outreach and enrollment campaign over the first enrollment period.”
Adults with the lowest incomes and Latinos experienced the largest declines in uninsured rates, researchers said.
“Young men and women drove a large part of the decline: The uninsured rate for 19- to 34-year-olds (nationally) declined from 28 percent to 18 percent, with an estimated 5.7 million fewer young adults uninsured,” the Commonwealth Fund survey found.
Uninsured rates for the nation’s poorest adults are highest in states that did not expand eligibility for Medicaid, such as Florida and Texas, they reported.
Nationwide, the percentage of those without heath insurance fell from about 20 percent to 15 percent. (Two other national surveys estimated lower percentages, below.) Not all states have insurance exchanges under the Affordable Care Act, and the federal government’s Obamacare signup process was notoriously troubled. California’s Obamacare operation was generally praised for its rollout, on the other hand.
The researchers found evidence the new coverage was in active use by many consumers:
By June, 60 percent of adults with new coverage through the marketplaces or Medicaid reported they had visited a doctor or hospital or filled a prescription; of these, 62 percent said they could not have accessed or afforded this care previously.
The survey of 4,425 adults was done by telephone from April 9 to June 2.
Meanwhile, Gallup reports that the national uninsured rate fell to 13.4 percent in the second quarter of 2014 — the lowest quarterly average recorded since Gallup and Healthways began tracking the percentage of uninsured Americans in 2008.
The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index found that the uninsured rate has dropped by 3.7 points since the fourth quarter of 2013, when it averaged 17.1%. Affordable Care Act health insurance policies kicked in Jan. 1.
Gallup said the second-quarter improvements were “due to a surge in the percentage of Americans who completed their enrollment in healthcare plans just before the mid-April deadline (to avoid federal penalties).”
And the Urban Institute’s Health Reform Monitoring Survey found that the national uninsured rate was 13.9 percent for June. “There is consistent evidence of ongoing gains in insurance coverage under the ACA,” researchers said.
Read more about the Commonwealth health care survey (PDF).
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