The U.S. uninsured rate held steady in President Trump’s first year in office at 8.8 percent in 2017, which amounts to 28.5 million people without health insurance, according to new data from the Census Bureau released Wednesday.
The rate wasn’t statistically different from 2016, when 28.1 million people lacked insurance, the bureau said. It said 91.2 percent of people had some kind of health insurance last year.
The coverage rate shows that the gains made tackling the uninsured rate due to Obamacare appear to have plateaued. In 2011, the uninsured rate was around 15 percent, but that rate declined since Obamacare’s implementation in 2014.
Two thirds of people, 67.2 percent, used private plans, while most of the rest used government plans such as Medicare or Medicaid.
The survey was based on whether someone got insurance at one point during 2017, and not if they were uninsured during the entire year.
