Employee Benefit News for School, City and County Employers

Survey: Uninsured numbers down after ACA rollout

Written by Valerie Ortiz | Jul 16, 2014 3:43:16 PM

The Commonwealth Fund recently discovered that uninsured rates in the U.S. fell drastically from 20 percent to 15 percent after people were able to use insurance plans through the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the MedPage Today reported.

The firm surveyed 4,425 people based on their possibilities of being affected by the new healthcare law. Sara R. Collins, Ph.D., said the research saw the people with the largest gains in coverage were those between the ages 19 and 34, Latinos and people in low-income brackets, according to the source.

"There are many data sources for measuring the uninsured," said Jonathan Gruber, Ph.D., according to the source. "This is a good one and I am comfortable with the consistent story being told by all of them, which is a very large reduction in the uninsured."

According to Vox, not only did the Commonwealth Fund find a decrease in uninsured rates, but Gallup, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation/Urban Institute, RAND Corporation and the Kaiser Family Foundation all had similar results in their research.

After so much evidence of the ACA working, many experts now wonder if the new data will help decrease the amount of uninsured even more, the MedPage Today reported.