Since the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act five years ago, 16.4 million uninsured people have obtained coverage, according to a Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) report.
HHS said 14.1 million people gained coverage from the start of the open enrollment period for health insurance exchanges on October 1, 2013, through March 4, 2015. That figure includes 3.2 million people from 19 to 25 years old. During that time period, the uninsured rate has decreased from 20.3 percent to 13.2 percent.
An additional 2.3 million people from 19 to 25 years old obtained coverage through the ACA provision that allows young adults to remain on their parents’ coverage until they turn 26.
The uninsured rate declined by 5.3 percentage points for Whites, 9.2 percentage points for African Americans and 12.3 percent for Latinos.
In states that expanded their Medicaid program, the uninsured rate decreased 7.4 percentage points compared with a decline of 6.9 percentage points in states that did not expand Medicaid.
Executive Editor
Tim Casey joined TriMed Media Group in 2015 as Executive Editor. For the previous four years, he worked as an editor and writer for HMP Communications, primarily focused on covering managed care issues and reporting from medical and health care conferences. He was also a staff reporter at the Sacramento Bee for more than four years covering professional, college and high school sports. He earned his undergraduate degree in psychology from the University of Notre Dame and his MBA degree from Georgetown University.