Health insurance coverage in the first three months of 2018 was about the same as the year before, but more Americans are saddled with high-deductible plans this year, according to new data released Thursday.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released the insurance coverage data on Thursday as Democrats charge that moves by the Trump administration are hampering enrollment in Obamacare.
In the first three months of 2018, 28.3 million people (8.8 percent of the U.S. population) were uninsured at the time of they were interviewed by the CDC. That isn’t statistically different from the first quarter of 2017, but it is 20 million fewer people than in 2010, CDC said.
However, more Americans are enrolled in a high-deductible plan this year. The percentage of people under 65 with private insurance in a high-deductible plan increased from 43.7 percent in the first quarter of 2017 to 47 percent in 2018.
A high-deductible plan requires the consumer to pay a large portion of their healthcare costs up to a certain point, after which the plan covers more of the costs. The plans have lower premiums than other healthcare plans, hence the boom in popularity as premiums for employer-sponsored and individual market plans continue to rise.
People who don’t have a plan through their employer or the government use the individual market, which includes Obamacare’s insurance exchanges, to buy coverage.
The survey results were based on data from 19,510 people.
The CDC survey did not specify a reason for the plateau in coverage for 2018. However, a May report from the think tank Commonwealth Fund said that gains in insurance coverage made since Obamacare’s passage in 2010 are starting to erode.
The reason is due to a lack of federal action to improve the Affordable Care Act and actions by the Trump administration to weaken enrollment, such as drastic cuts to funding and outreach.
Democrats have claimed that the administration is purposefully trying to undermine the law as part of its overall effort to repeal it. President Trump himself has said it would be best to let Obamacare “implode” to increase his chances of getting support for repeal.
