Good news: Texas’ percentage of uninsured residents continues to drop. Bad news: It’s still higher than what the national average was in 2010, the year before the Affordable Care Act was passed.
It’s constitutional – deal with it
The percentage of Texans without insurance has dropped dramatically since the launch of the Affordable Care Act, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Tuesday. In 2015, the uninsured rate fell to 16.8 percent.
While the state continues to lead the nation in the rate of people who are not covered, advocates for the health care law who have watched its implementation say the headway is undeniable. Prior to the law’s passage in 2010, the Texas rate of uninsured hovered around 25 percent, or one in four.
“This is indeed significant progress,” said Elena Marks, president and CEO of Episcopal health Foundation in Houston. She is co-author of a separate series of ACA tracking reports issued through Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy.
Nationally, the rate of uninsured fell to a historic low of 9.1 percent last year, the National Health Interview Survey released Tuesday found. That translates to about 7.4 million people gaining coverage last year on top of the 8.8 million who signed up in 2014. It is the first time the uninsured rate has slid into the single digits.
In 2010, the national rate of uninsured was 16 percent.
“The historically low rate of uninsured in America reflects people’s desires for health coverage. Americans like having access to health care,” said Ken Janda, president and CEO of Community Health Choice, a nonprofit managed-care organization serving Harris and 19 other Texas counties.
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The CDC study shows that last year adults in states that expanded Medicaid were less likely to be uninsured. In those states, the percentage of un-insured decreased to 9.8 in 2015 from 18.4 percent two years earlier. By contrast, the uninsured rate in states like Texas that chose not to expand the program decreased to 17.5 percent last year from 22.7 percent in 2013.
Raise your hand if you’re surprised that the states that have refused to expand Medicaid had the highest rates of uninsured residents pre-Obamacare. I’ve pretty much run out of things to say with these news stories, so fill in your own snarky/heartfelt/cynical comment as appropriate.