The Obama administration’s Department of Health and Human Services released a report Thursday claiming that Obamacare has lead to improved health insurance coverage across all income, race, age and ethnic groups.
“Regardless of your income, age, geography, or race, everyone is gaining access to coverage or better coverage under the Affordable Care Act,” said HHS Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell.
The report looked at uninsured rates from 2010 to 2015 for different groups, and found that these rates have fallen each year. HHS touted provisions in Obamacare as the main reason.
For example, the report said middle-income families were able to benefit from language that prevents insurers from denying coverage of pre-existing conditions, and noted that younger people are allowed to stay on their parents’ healthcare plan until age 26.
HHS’s defense of the law comes before a pivotal open enrollment for Obamacare that starts on Nov. 1. The law’s marketplace exchanges have been beset by major defections from insurers such as Aetna and UnitedHealth due to mounting financial losses.
In addition, many states have approved double-digit premium increases for 2017. Experts believe the rate hikes are a market correction as insurers underpriced their plans when the marketplaces first went online in 2014.
At least so far, however, the HHS report found that all income groups saw reductions in their uninsured rates of about 40 percent since the law was passed in 2010. People who were less than 100 percent of the federal poverty level saw a 39 percent reduction, while people with 400 percent or higher had a 42 percent reduction in uninsured rates.
The report also found that the uninsured rate in urban areas decreased 42 percent, and fell 39 percent in rural areas.
“The similar overall coverage gains for rural individuals are particularly striking in light of the fact that uninsured rural individuals are disproportionately concentrated in states that have not expanded Medicaid,” the report said. So far 31 states and the District of Columbia have expanded Medicaid under the law.
Among racial and ethnic groups, Asians had the highest drop in the uninsured rate, a 59 percent reduction from 2010 to 2015. The uninsured rate among blacks fell 47 percent, and it fell 46 percent for whites. Hispanics had the lowest drop with 35 percent.
Overall, the uninsured rate declined in the first quarter of 2016 to 8.6 percent, the first time that the rate has gone below 9 percent.
