The Obama administration can breathe easy now that high numbers for insured Americans are locked in.
But the President’s team has something else to celebrate. A new poll shows that the number of uninsured Americans is at its lowest since 2008.
Released Monday, the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index measured the share of adults without health insurance. That shrank from 17.1 percent at the end of last year to 15.6 percent for the first three months of 2014.
The decline of 1.5 percentage points would translate roughly to more than 3.5 million people gaining coverage. The trend accelerated as the March 31 enrollment deadline loomed.
“The Affordable Care Act, commonly referred to as ‘Obamacare,’ appears to be accomplishing its goal of increasing the percentage of Americans with health insurance,” said Gallup’s analysis of the findings.
Furthermore, the new numbers pulled by Gallup reveal that those least likely to have insurance, based on previous numbers, are now insured, thanks to Obamacare.
Gallup found the biggest insurance gains were among lower-income people and among African-Americans.
Among people with household incomes of less than $36,000 a year, the share of uninsured shrank by 3.2 percentage points from levels at the end of 2013.
African-Americans saw their uninsured rate drop by 3.3 percentage points.
Late last week, the administration announced that 7.1 million individuals had signed up for subsidized private plans through the new insurance market and 3 million previously uninsured people gained coverage through the law’s Medicaid expansion.
Compared with Gallup’s modest numbers, it seems like a huge stretch, but the White House figure includes insured people who switched their previous coverage, as well as people who have not paid their first month’s premium, and who would therefore still be uninsured. White House numbers also included children, while Gallup’s did not.
For more information on 2014 uninsured rates, click here.
SOURCE: Gallup, Huffington Post | PHOTO CREDIT: Gallup, Getty
