Uninsurance Rate For Unemployed Americans Dropped Significantly Over The Last Month

BY SY MUKHERJEE/Think Progress

A new Gallup poll released on Thursday finds that the U.S. uninsurance rate dropped to 16.1 percent — the lowest level in over a year — as Obamacare officially went into effect on January 1:

CREDIT: GALLUP

While the overall number is a modest decline from December’s 17.3 percent uninsurance rate, unemployed Americans have seen significant gains in health coverage since December. Since then, the uninsurance rate among this group has fallen by 6.7 percentage points. “The unemployed remain the subgroup with the highest uninsured rate at 34.1 percent, but the initial decline among this group suggests the healthcare law may be working as intended for unemployed adults,” wrote Gallup.

Non-white Americans also gained health care coverage between December and January, with their uninsurance rate falling by two percent.

To date, at least 2.2 million Americans have enrolled in private health plans through Obamacare’s state and federal insurance marketplaces. Another 6.3 million individuals weredeemed eligible for Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) between October and December.

It’s still unclear how many of the Medicaid enrollees are simply re-applying for coverage and how many are gaining it for the first time after becoming newly-eligible in states that expanded the program under Obamacare. But the drop in unemployed Americans’ uninsurance rate indicates that people who are struggling financially are likely taking advantage of Obamacare’s coverage options.

Assessing Obamacare’s total effect on the uninsured is impossible until the open enrollment season ends on March 31. Preliminary reports have indicated that most people who gained private coverage in the first three months had been previously insured — but that isn’t necessarily surprising considering that many junk insurance plans were outlawed by the health law beginning in 2014, encouraging people with those plans to enroll in new ones before the New Year in order to avoid a coverage gap.

Other surveys have suggested that uninsured Americans may be taking their time to assess coverage options under the health law. A Commonwealth Fund report from earlier this month found that just under six in ten potentially eligible uninsured adults who had either not visited an Obamacare marketplace or visited one without signing up for a policy said they plan to enroll by the end of March.

How Obamacare Is Trying To Make It Easier For Poor Americans To Pay For Their Health Insurance

By Sy Mukherjee/Think Progress

Officials overseeing the implementation of the Affordable Care Act have proposed rules to require that insurance companies accept a variety of payment methods, including cashier’s checks, money orders, and re-loadable pre-paid debit cards. That’s expected to help millions of low-income Americans — many of whom don’t have access to credit cards and checking accounts — who will receive federal tax credits to purchase insurance through Obamacare’s statewide marketplaces.

The health law extends premium subsidies to American households making up to 400 percent of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL), or about $94,200 for a family of four.

But many of the people gaining insurance through Obamacare’s marketplaces will be relatively poor, since higher-paying jobs tend to come with employer-sponsored health coverage. That could wind up being a problem when they try to pay their monthly premium under the law, because a large number of lower-income people don’t have checking accounts or do business with banks, despite the increasingly electronic nature of money transfers.

CNNMoney reports that 10 million U.S. households don’t have bank accounts at all, and according to one study cited by Kaiser Health News, one in four Americans who will qualify for premium subsidies through the health law don’t have checking accounts or a credit card.

These Americans have to rely on the sort of alternative payment methods that federal officials are now encouraging. Critics may point out that some of these methods — particularly debit card transaction — carry transaction fees, and could lead insurers to pass the cost of those charges onto low-income Americans.

But as Kaiser Health News notes, another Obamacare consumer protection will shield consumers from potential price gouging by insurers: the so-called “80/20 rule” that requires individual and small group health plans to spend at least 80 percent of the premiums they charge Americans on actual health care, rather than administrative overhead or profit. Card transaction fees are considered to be administrative, meaning that insurers would have to include those costs as part of their 20 percent overhead limit.

CROWD AT GOP DEBATE: SOCIETY SHOULD LET THE UNINSURED DIE

From Think Progress:

As Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) responded to a question about how he would help a 30-year-old man without health insurance who needs intensive treatment, the crowd cheered when moderator CNN debate moderator Wolf Blitzer asked if society should let him die. Watch:

Uninsured 22-Year-Old Boehner Constituent Dies From Swine Flu

By Victor Zapanta A 22-year-old woman from Oxford, Ohio, died from swine flu on Wednesday. Kimberly Young graduated from Miami University in December and continued to live in Oxford, Ohio, within Minority Leader John Boehner’s congressional distrct. Reports now indicate that after initially getting sick, Young put off treatment because she was uninsured:

Young became ill about two weeks ago, but didn’t seek care initially because she didn’t have health insurance and was worried about the cost, according to Brent Mowery, her friend and former roommate. […]

On Tuesday, Sept. 22, Young’s condition suddenly worsened and her roommate drove her to McCullough Hyde Memorial Hospital in Oxford, where she was flown in critical condition to University Hospital in Cincinnati.

“That’s the most tragic part about it. If she had insurance, she would have gone to the doctor,” Mowery said.

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, 30 percent of 19-24 year olds are uninsured, more than any other group. Despite the conservative argument that young people are voluntarily refusing health coverage in favor of extra spending money, the reality is that high costs on the individual market put coverage out of reach. As Suzy Khimm notes at Campus Progress, young people “are far more likely to be working part-time or lower-paying jobs for employers who don’t offer coverage”:

In its 2008 study, the Commonwealth Fund found that 66 percent of young adults aged 19 to 29 who experienced a time without coverage in the past year said they had gone without it because of the cost. [...]

Young people might have a better chance of accessing comprehensive coverage if there were a public plan, which could lower the cost of insurance, particularly for those without good employer benefits. Young people may also have a better chance at coverage if there were generous subsidies for lower-income individuals, as many take lower-paying jobs when they first enter the workforce.

Even though Boehner represents a large university, he has been an outspoken opponent of a public option that would make insurance cheaper and more accessible to recent graduates like Young. On Meet the Press last week, the Minority Leader continued to stick to the obstructionist Frank Luntz-endorsed talking points, dismissing the public option as “big government” while defending a watered-down plan.

Update TPM writes, "Still, if Young's lack of insurance did contribute to her not seeking treatment sooner, it would be hard to find a starker or more compelling example of the need to fix our broken health insurance system. And the fact that she was a constituent of the man who's leading House Republicans' in their effort to block reform only underlines the point."

States With Most Uninsured Most Likely To Believe Euthanasia, Govt. Takeover Myths

By Sam Stein

The states that have been most skeptical of President Barack Obama's agenda for health care reform also have some of the highest levels of uninsured people in the nation.

A new study by Gallup shows that large swaths of populations in the South and West -- anywhere from one-in-five to one-in-four individuals -- are currently lacking health insurance coverage.

These same regions also have the largest percentage of populations who believe widely perpetuated mistruths about the Obama agenda, including allegations that the president will set up "death panels" and wants a complete government takeover of the health care system.

According to Gallup, of the 25 states with the greatest percentage of the uninsured, all but three are based in the South or the Midwest.

LIST OF STATES WITH MOST UNINSURED

Texas - 27 percent of the population is uninsured New Mexico --- 25.6 percent Mississippi - 24 percent Louisiana - 22.4 percent Nevada - 22.2 percent Oklahoma - 22.2 percent (considered a Midwest state) California - 21 percent Wyoming - 20.7 percent Florida - 20.7 percent Georgia - 20.7 percent South Carolina - 20.4 percent Montana - 20.3 percent Alaska -- 20.2 percent Arkansas - 20.1 percent Colorado - 20 percent Oregon - 19.4 percent West Virginia - 19.3 percent (considered a Northeast state) North Carolina - 19.3 percent Idaho - 18.8 percent Utah - 18.1 percent Kentucky - 17.9 percent Tennessee - 17.8 percent Nebraska - 17.7 percent Alabama - 17.2 percent Missouri - 17.1 percent (considered a Midwest state)

STATES IN SOUTH AND WEST ARE AS FOLLOWS

South: FL, NC, SC, AL, MS, GA, VA, TN, KY, LA, AR, TX

West: NM, CA, OR, WA, AK, HI, MT, ID, UT, NV, AZ, WY, CO

Compare these findings to those pulled from a recent Daily Kos/Research 2000 poll, which showed that more people in the South and Midwest are prone to believe myths about Obama's health care plan than in other regions of the country.

In the South, 26 percent of the public said they believed the health care reform plan being considered by President Obama and Congress requires elderly patients to meet with government officials to discuss "end of life" options, including euthanasia. Twenty percent of Westerners said the same thing. In the Northeast and Midwest those numbers were 11 percent and 17 percent respectively.

Meanwhile, 45 percent of Southerners said they thought Obama's health care reform included a government takeover of the entire health care system. Twenty-three percent of Westerners agreed. In the Northeast and Midwest those numbers were 10 percent and 20 percent respectively.

That populations most in need of comprehensive insurance reform are most likely to buy into false criticisms of the president's plan is a fascinating window into the current state of the health care debate. Theoretically, the president should be receiving more support in his efforts to expand coverage from those who currently lack it. The opposite, however, seems to hold true.