The number of people without health insurance rose by 1.9 million people from 2017 to 2018 despite strong economic performance, according to a report released Tuesday by the U.S. Census Bureau.
The total number of uninsured was 27.5 million, or 8.5% of the population, a 0.5 percentage point increase from 2017. The change was driven by a decline in government coverage of 0.4 percentage points and by a decline in insurance coverage among Hispanics.
The overall rise in the uninsured is the first increase recorded by the Bureau since the one that occurred from 2008 to 2009, and the first decline since Obamacare started expanding coverage in 2014. According to the agency’s presentation, the change in the uninsured can be attributed to economic trends, changes in demographics, and changes in health policy that affect access to care.
But the latest data will provide ammunition to Democrats and defenders of Obamacare who accuse the Trump administration of working to “sabotage” the healthcare law. Obamacare had helped to reduce the number of uninsured to a historic low by offering government-subsidized private coverage and by expanding Medicaid to low-income people. Since President Trump took office, he has vowed to repeal Obamacare and his administration supports a lawsuit to invalidate the law.
Still, other projections had shown that Obamacare could only go so far in reducing the number of uninsured. The cost of health insurance is out of reach for middle-income people who don’t qualify for subsidies and have dropped out of the Obamacare marketplaces. A Congressional Budget Office report from 2010 projected that health insurance rates would level off from 2017 to 2018, and a newer analysis projects it will plateau in the decade ahead without any changes to the current law.
The predictions, however, didn’t account for drops in government coverage, as the Census Bureau report shows. Between 2017 and 2018, the percentage of people covered by Medicaid decreased by 0.7 percentage points to 17.9%, the report shows. One factor in the change could be that people earned more money and no longer qualified for Medicaid but didn’t sign up for private health insurance.
The results could also signal the impact of the Trump administration’s immigration policies, which discourage immigrants from seeking public services such as Medicaid when they’re seeking citizenship.
The data show that the decreases in the insured were most pronounced among Hispanics, who saw a decrease in coverage of 1.6 percentage points.
The decline in private coverage among Hispanics was 1.1 percentage points, and for government coverage it was 1 percentage point. The report also shows that the rate of uninsured declined both among foreign- and native-born people.
With the exception of seniors, the only other age group that didn’t see an increase in the uninsured was adults between the ages of 26 to 34.
The share of uninsured children 18 and under increased by 0.6 percentage points between 2017 and 2018, to 5.5%. The rates increased among children who lived in families making above 400% of the federal poverty level and particularly among children living in the South. The uninsured rate increased 1 percentage point for Hispanic children, 0.5 percentage points for white children, and stayed the same for other racial groups.
The data out Tuesday from the Census Bureau show that, in 2018, private health insurance covered 67.3% of the population and government coverage, including Medicare and Medicaid, covered 34.4% of the population. The rate of Medicare coverage increased by 0.4 percentage points, driven by the growth in the number of people qualifying for the program at age 65.
