RTThe latest analysis from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) shows that more than 16.4 million Americans have acquired health coverage under the Affordable Care Act.
The report issued Monday was based in part on findings from a Gallup poll, which found the uninsured rate for Americans had fallen from 20.3 percent in October 2013 – when the sign-ups began – to 12.3 percent during the first quarter of 2015. The increases come from sign-ups through the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance exchanges and the expansion of Medicaid.
“Since the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) almost five years ago, about 16.4 million uninsured people have gained health coverage – the largest reduction in the uninsured in four decades,” HHS Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell said in a written statement accompanying a new report.
Remember when conservatives claimed that Obamacare was increasing the number of uninsured? Off by about 16 million
http://t.co/KuqXrPhDhr— Brian Tashman (@briantashman) March 16, 2015
The increase of insured Americans represents a 35 percent reduction in the number of uninsured, leaving 26 million American adults without health insurance compared to the previous number of approximately 40 million.
The greatest changes in coverage gains were among Latinos and African-Americans, according to a Gallup-Healthways Well-Being index survey. For Latinos, the uninsured rate was 41.8 percent before Obamacare was launched. By the first quarter of 2015, that number dropped by just over 12 percent, leaving 29.5 million without insurance.
For African-Americans, 22.4 percent were without insurance by the first quarter in 2014. That percentage was almost cut in half by the first quarter of 2015, leaving 13.2 percent of African-Americans without health insurance.
https://twitter.com/BenLaBolt/status/577493298975260672
White Americans, meanwhile, saw a 5.3 percentage point reduction in their uninsured rate. Just 9 percent remain without health coverage.
The overall decline comes from government-run marketplaces that sell health insurance, the loosening of Medicaid eligibility requirements in more than half the country and allowing young adults to stay on their parents’ health plans until they turn 26.
“When it comes to the metrics of affordability, access and quality, the evidence shows that the Affordable Care Act is working, and families, businesses and taxpayers are better off as a result,” said Burwell.
There are 28 states and Washington, DC that have expanded their Medicaid programs, and another 22 states kept their stricter restrictions on Medicaid eligibility.
The goal of Obamacare was to reduce the number of uninsured Americans and the latest figures suggest growing progress towards the goal, but this achievement could be threatened by a lawsuit being heard by the US Supreme Court. The lawsuit, King v. Burwell, centers on whether federal subsidies in 34 states that have not set up their own health insurance markets (“exchanges”) are legal under the law.
The plaintiffs argue a particular section of the law refers only to “exchanges established by the state” when mentioning eligibility for subsidies – meaning it explicitly excludes marketplaces established by the federal government. The government is arguing that the phrasing may be unfortunate, but that the entire law clearly intends that the federal tax credits apply to people using the federally established exchange, not just the state ones.
If the Supreme Court rules against the government, that would mean the end of federal subsidies to more than seven million Americans in 37 states. This, in turn, would disrupt the fragile framework of the law that orders Americans to purchase insurance or face tax penalties, while forbidding the insurers to turn anyone away. Insurance companies, Democratic lawmakers and liberal activists argue this would effectively destroy the ACA.
http://rt.com/usa/241321-16-millions-americans-health-insured/
First of all, I think this article is complete BS, and I don’t believe any of the numbers they’re rolling out here. They’re trying to conceal the massive failure that Obamacare is, and their usual method for hiding their ineptitude is the lie, which rarely fails them because Americans would rather believe happy lies than accept harsher truths.
But the bigger deceit here is not the numbers of people who have “access to healthcare”, but rather it’s that the quality of healthcare has gone down the tubes, and Obamacare has cost Americans all of their best doctors.
Good doctors work only for the rich, and working people will meet a committee that decides whether you’re too old or too sick to be worth saving. But of course, you’ll be paying for wetbacks to have all the babies they want, without ever getting a job to pay for the little bastards.
What Obamacare basically did was gut Americans’ healthcare options so we can pay for wetback babies instead of seeing competent doctors ourselves.
This is all true. What we are paying for is not healthcare. We who are paying, are paying for nothing more than enriching insurance company executives and their investors. It is otherwise all a trick, all an illusion. People who are not paying, can go to some sort of medical facility and obtain some sort of illusory services at no cost to themselves, but I would not call that “health.” We are further robbed of our ability to obtain actual health (let alone “care”) because our dollars which we might otherwise use for organic food or herbal medicine or simply paying out of pocket for an occasional doctor, are being extorted from us for the use of others, at their pleasure. All of this is wrong, from the age discrimination to the lack of consumer choice; none of this is right, but because the government says it is right and good, people are just going along with it. Articles like this are perfidious fiction.
Not to mention JR we as working Americans who already pay out the ass were forced under duress to buy this garbage.
I GET ILL EVERY MONTH WHEN THEY DEDUCT OUT OF MY ACCOUNT!!!!
and it’s not even a product I *want* to buy, nor will I ever use it (God willing). When Obamacare took effect, our employer switched us to Kaiser and we had no say in this. Forget about it. It’s just another paycheck deduction I have zero control over.
Marvelous. We all have unaffordable “health care” obtained at gunpoint. Buy or die, the Obama way.
“Since the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) almost five years ago, about 16.4 million uninsured people have gained health coverage… ”
No, what they’ve gained is guaranteed Big Pharma prescriptions written for every imaginable ‘disease’ the so-called ‘medical’ establishment can conjure up.
And guaranteed access to screenings which lead to body scans for every imaginable complaint that reveal, oh by the way, while we are looking at your kidney, gee we found this spot on your lung and also your ovary, so we need to do some more testing, and maybe some surgery, some drugs while we are at it, maybe organ removal and more drugs, drugs for the side effects caused by those drugs…. wow you $ure are lucky you had that indige$tion that $ent you to the ho$pital, becau$e when we ran tho$e te$t$ we found thi$ cancer and $aved your life!!!
Ka-ching!
Profits MUST be maintained.
Think of the shareholders.
they are making merchandise of us, no doubt about it.
First of all, we are the only “modern civilized” country that hasn’t figured out a way to cover ALL it’s citizens with health care. That is on purpose.
We had problems WAY before Obamacare.
First health insurance companies invented the CO-PAY. It was $5, so no one complained. That was in the 1980’s, I clearly remember when they started the CO-PAY. I said at the time, why am I paying for health insurance THEN paying this CO-PAY they invented out of thin air? Now CO-PAY’s can be $500 or more.
THEN…they invented out of thin air: the DEDUCTIBLE. That means you have to pay EVERYTHING cash out-of-pocket until you meet this OTHER thing they invented out of thin air, the DEDUCTIBLE. I don’t remember how much a DEDUCTIBLE was at first, but I remember them as low as $100. NOW…they are $6,000 PER PERSON regularly!
THEN…they invented: CO-INSURANCE. CO-INSURANCE is simply they don’t cover a flat % of everything, like, say, 20%. That means, besides paying the CO-PAY, and the DEDUCTIBLE, now they just flat-out aren’t going to pay 20% of EVERYTHING PERIOD.
Now this is all BESIDES paying every-increasing PREMIUMS.
In the early 1980’s, I paid NOTHING for my premium…ZERO. It was a work benefit. It was $90 A YEAR to cover the rest of my family. And that is before they invented CO-PAY’s, DEDUCTIBLES, & CO-INSURANCE. And everything was covered.
Now you could regularly pay up to $1,000/month for SH*T coverage where nothing is covered.
This has nothing to do with the Obamacare debacle, we have a huge problem in this country before and now including Obamacare.
Oh, I forgot to tell you what else they invented: SUPPLEMENTAL INSURANCE. You know what that is? It’s ANOTHER premium you pay for ANOTHER insurance. SUPPLEMENTAL INSURANCE covers the things they invented out of thin air: CO-PAY’S, DEDUCTIBLES, CO-INSURANCE, and costs as much as your sh*tty regular insurance premium that now doesn’t cover anything.
The problem isn’t ONLY Obamacare. And there was a problem way before Obamacare.
The problem is insurance companies care about one thing: maximum profits. And everyone else involved, that is all they care about. And it’s the same problem with everything else (like government): there’s a bunch of GREEDY CROOKS running it.
We need health CARE, not health INSURANCE. And we need health CARE…when we need it.
Long before Obamacare, the CROOKS invented: CO-PAY, DEDUCTIBLE, CO-INSURANCE, SUPPLEMENTAL INSURANCE…all the while raising premiums through the roof to the point where people either can’t afford insurance or work just to pay for the insurance.