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Gallup released a new tracking poll on Monday that shows that the uninsured rate for Americans dropped to 13.4% in April. This continues a trend that started at the end of 2013, when the uninsured rate peaked at 18.0%. Since then, we’ve seen the marketplaces open, allowing millions of people to buy private health insurance, many for the first time in their lives. Due to the success of the exchanges, which signed up more people than previously anticipated, the uninsured rate has dropped over four points in a period of only a few months.
After open enrollment began in October, the number of uninsured people in the United States started to decline at a steady rate. Overall for the first quarter of 2014, the uninsured rate was 15.6%. For the final month of the first quarter, March, the uninsured rate was down to 15.0%. Now, in just one month’s time, we see an even larger drop as we are now sitting at 13.4%. Considering that there were other people able to sign up for private insurance plans through the month of April due to heavy volume at the end of the open enrollment period, we should see another drop in May.
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This large drop in the uninsured rate takes away another Republican talking point, that the ACA was causing millions of people to lose their insurance. This poll completely contradicts that, as it shows millions of people who have gained insurance that previously did not have any. Obviously, there was a huge net gain in the insurance pools due to the provisions in the law that allowed people who were unable to sign up before or had to pay for extremely expensive plans with little coverage due to preexisting conditions to finally purchase health insurance. Also, the expansion of Medicaid and the provision that allows adults up to 26 years of age to remain on their parents’ plans has helped drop the number of uninsured in this country.
Besides this poll, other data compiled by the White House shows that the majority of people that signed up through the marketplaces were previously uninsured. On top of that, the federal marketplace only compiled information on those who qualified for subsidies. The vast majority of those that qualified for subsidies did not have insurance at the time. That number totaled 4.5 million. It would make sense that at least a small percentage of those that didn’t qualify for a subsidy but signed up anyway were uninsured at the time.
It seems that the final talking point for Republicans to hold on to will be surrounding the payment of premiums. Recently, the GOP released a laughable House report stating that only two-thirds of those who signed up had paid their premiums through April 15th. What is laughable about this is that they are counting those who signed up right before the deadline and those who were given extensions to sign up after March 31st. Millions signed up during that period, yet their premium payments were due until the end of April or even later. For those that signed up earlier, those who followed through with paying their premiums ranged from 85% to 90%.
Justin Baragona is the Managing Editor at Politicus Sports as well as Senior Editor at PoliticusUSA. He was a political writer for 411Mania.com before joining PoliticusUSA. Politically, Justin considers himself a liberal but also a realist and pragmatist. Currently, Justin lives in St. Louis, MO and is married. Besides writing, he also runs his own business after spending a number of years in the corporate world. You can follow Justin on Twitter either with his personal handle (@justinbaragona) or the Sports site’s (@PoliticusSports).
