A whole year has passed by since the Affordable Care Act went into the effect and the results are in. According to a recent study, the number of poor Americans that were previously uninsured declined in 2014, which is great news.
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The government recently released the National Health Interview survey, which show the numbers of people that are insured through Obamacare. Low-income Americans were the ones that benefited the most from the Affordable Care Act, mainly because prior to this they had no health insurance. The survey found that more African-Americans became insured through this, more than any other racial group.Hispanics under the age of 65 also benefited greatly with the rate of uninsured dropping by 17%.
Overall, by the government’s “poor standards” the federal poverty threshold was $23,850 for a family of four and $11,670 for a single person. Near poor is defined as those families living on incomes between 100 and 200% of poverty or $23,850 to $47,700 a year.
With those standards, 32% of poor Americans were uninsured in 2014, which is down from 39% in 2013. The percentage of near poor Americans who were uninsured declined to 31% from 39% and all other Americans that lacked insurance declined to 9% from 11%.
The survey showed that many states that expanded Medicaid saw a bigger effect because many of those states had the biggest share of uninsured populations. Though several states did not expand and they saw the drop of uninsured by only 2%, while those that expanded saw a 4% decline.
Those that were uninsured for over a year dropped to 9.7% from 12.4%. Overall the survey found that the Affordable Care Act had a greater effect on the long-term uninsured and low-income families.
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