Federal report: 7 million fewer Americans uninsured this year

The number of Americans without health insurance dropped from 36 million last year to 29 million in the first quarter of this year, according to the latest in a string of reports showing uninsured rates are on the decline.

The newest report, released by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics on Wednesday, contains early estimates from the National Health Interview Survey, which are based on data for 26,121 people from across the nation. The estimate of 29 million, which represents 9.2% of Americans, reflects the portion of respondents who reported being uninsured at the time of the interview.

"Our report doesn't address any reasons" behind the drop in the uninsured, lead author Robin Cohen says."We're a policy-neutral research organization."

The report adds to mounting evidence of the same trend. Research published last month in the Journal of the American Medical Association analyzed 2012-15 results of the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index and found a 7.9 percentage point drop in the number of people who reported being uninsured since the Affordable Care Act took effect. And a report released in March by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said the number of adults without insurance fell 16.5 million from five years ago.

"Certainly, the biggest thing that's going on is the ACA," says Rachel Garfield, a senior researcher and expert on the uninsured at the Kaiser Family Foundation. "The reason we know that is that groups being targeted by the ACA are seeing the sharpest declines in uninsured rates."

Wednesday's report details insurance gains for various groups in the first quarter of this year:

• Among adults 18-64, 18.1% had public coverage, 70.4% had private coverage and 13% were uninsured. The uninsured rate was down from 16.3% in 2014, a departure from generally rising uninsured rates during the years 1997-2010.

• Among children, 4.6% were uninsured — less than half the 1997 rate of 13.9% — and 40.4% had public coverage. Just over 56% were covered by private plans, up slightly from 2013, reversing a 14-year trend of declining private coverage rates among the youngest Americans.

• More poor people have gotten insured. Since 2013, poor and near-poor children and working-age adults saw the biggest drops in their uninsured rates. And working-age adults who live in states that expanded Medicaid under the ACA were less likely to be uninsured than residents of non-expansion states.

Avik Roy, a health care policy expert with the free market Manhattan Institute, says he'd rather see more Americans get insured through jobs than through Medicaid, partly because fewer physicians accept the government plan for the poor and disabled and recipients don't get the same access to care.

Roy also argues that employment is at least as important as the ACA in driving health coverage. When more people are working, he says, more have insurance.

"In general, we should fully expect this in an economy that's slowly recovering," he says. "The ACA is part of the reason why we've had such a slow economic recovery."

Garfield acknowledges that the improving economy helps push down uninsured rates, but says it's not as big a factor as the health reform law. She expects to see uninsured rates keep falling through "full implementation" of the ACA in 2016-17, then begin leveling off and perhaps eventually reach half the pre-ACA number of 46 million. Experts don't expect everyone to get insurance; undocumented immigrants, for example, aren't eligible for coverage through the ACA.

"Many expect the (uninsured) rate will continue to fall," Garfield says. "But it won't reach zero."