Progress reducing US uninsured rate comes to a halt
WASHINGTON — Five years of progress reducing the number of Americans without health insurance has come to a halt, according to a government report out Tuesday. More than a factoid, it shows the stakes in the Republican drive to roll back the Affordable Care Act.
The report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 28.6 million people were uninsured in 2016, unchanged from 2015. It was the first year since passage of the health care overhaul in 2010 that the number of uninsured did not budge.
The uninsured rate for 2016 was 9 per cent, an insignificant difference from 9.1 per cent the previous year. When former President Barack Obama signed the ACA in 2010, the uninsured rate had been 16 per cent.
Tuesday’s report suggests that the ACA was running low on gas in Obama’s final year as president. Premiums for private insurance were about to jump, and 19 states continued to refuse the law’s Medicaid expansion.