Via the US Census Bureau:
The Current Population Survey shows that the percentage of people with health insurance for all or part of 2014 was 89.6 percent, higher than the rate in 2013 (86.7 percent).
After several years of a relatively stable uninsured rate between 2008 and 2013 as measured by the American Community Survey, the percentage of the population who were uninsured dropped in 2014. This represents the largest percentage point decline in the uninsured rate during this period.
Now let’s get the rest of the Medicaid hold-out states on board accepting free federal money and then let’s start working on underinsurance.
bemused
Minnesota uninsured has dropped to 5.9%.
debbie
http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2015/08/21/ohios-uninsured-rates-plummet-obamacare-embrace/
It must kill Kasich not to be able to wave these numbers around on the campaign trail.
MomSense
Yes, please let’s deal with the non-expansion states. People are suffering. If the media were smart and ethical, this would be the story of the decade. OH MY GOD one person died from Ebola because Texas didn’t have it’s act together but how many people are dying or losing everything or suffering with chronic pain and illness every single day because of Republican psychopaths.
BGinCHI
Why does the Guardian think Carly Fiorina won the debate?
I was in bed since in Norway it was the middle of the night. I read through the comments on the threads and Marshall’s stuff at TPM and that doesn’t really come through.
What gives? Sounds like they were all crazy and Trump bullied them. Not sure how that changes anything except for Walker & Bush being in the tank.
raven
@BGinCHI: She was extra nasty and lied about Planned Parenthood and the morons loved it.
debbie
@raven:
I love her plans for building up the military, but I can’t imagine where she’ll conjure up all the manpower the plan will require.
raven
@debbie: Backdoor draft.
BGinCHI
@raven: I see. So being a mean liar, esp regarding women’s health is the ticket to success.
Disgusting fucking people. I wish I believed in hell, since right now I only believe that it’s other people.
Redshift
Much as I wish this news will change minds, I suspect the GOPers in the Virginia legislature will remain impervious to reality. Sigh.
rikyrah
Just imagine how much lower the numbers would be if all the states adopted Medicaid expansion?
But, thanks for bringing the good news.
Elizabelle
Love some good news. Thank you, RMayhew.
@Redshift: Maybe, re the GOP legislature. But maybe we can make it harder for them.
Matt McIrvin
@BGinCHI: Ezra Klein was bullish on Carly Fiorina:
http://www.vox.com/2015/9/16/9342761/carly-fiorina-debate
Basically, he thinks she’s an extremely effective liar.
ellennellee
richard, we really need to be working on universal healthcare, and getting rid of the insurance companies’ role altogether, doncha thin’?
this death by a thousand cuts is too slow for all these folks in need, and we’re just prolonging the inevitable.
meanwhile, much as i love me some bernie, his plan to expand medicare to everyone strikes me as way low and unambitious. i’ve been struggling with the medicare nightmare (i’m healthy as a horse, but just the process of getting signed up and all the options and nonsense; ridiculous!!), and would not wish that on anyone.
tho of course, that’s not far from what we have with the ACA anyways.
thx for all your contribution on this stuff. really helpful.
lowercase steve
@rikyrah:
It would subtract another 2-4 percentage points from the overall uninsured adult rate, I believe. Most of the rest are undocumented and our system has nothing for them.
boatboy_srq
@MomSense: Scary furrin’ diseases make news. Normal, preventable, treatable ailments have been around forever and don’t make news unless something goes haywire and lots of people start getting affected. For example, flu by itself is no big deal but a flu epidemic that kills thousands in a small area makes the news. People not getting sick isn’t “sexy” so nobody reports it.
I try not to wish anyone harm, but I’d love to see LePage deal with some treatable condition using the kind of insurance he’s pushing Mainahs towahd (i.e. none).
Belafon
@ellennellee: How would you get it implemented in this country?
lowercase steve
@ellennellee:
Well, you can’t just (realistically) nationalize all health insurance companies. You expand Medicaid up in income and Medicare down in age…you introduce tweaks/taxes/regulatory changes to coax people onto the individual exchanges and away from employer provided health insurance and then you work on getting a public option onto the exchanges. Then the private companies whither away until you eventually get de facto single payer health insurance.
It will take decades but the ACA can serve as a foundation for that effort.
boatboy_srq
@Elizabelle: We all know that the Reichwing will dismiss this as more “manufactured statistics” coming from Washington.
BGinCHI
@Matt McIrvin: Klein: CF sounded like the smartest person there, even though everything she said was either wrong or a gross exaggeration.
What is so depressing about this is that the right wing want someone who will act in an authoritarian fashion, no matter what they do.
There is literally nothing she or the other candidates could say that would turn off the right, as long as it is destructive, militaristic, and opposes a Democratic position.
She could have said she was in favor of exterminating 7+ million Arabs and they would have cheered.
Thoughtful Today
:o
Which leaves 30 MILLION Americans without insurance.
And again: Insurance is NOT healthcare.
Republicans will continue to outright reject, deliberately torpedo, and slow walk policies that serve that last 30 million.
So don’t give up the push for: “Single payer / Medicare for All / Universal Healthcare.”
Think BIGGER.
gene108
Reducing the cost of health care will go a long way to address under insurance.
WereBear
This might be appropriate here:
Another Republican myth, debunked!
MomSense
@Thoughtful Today:
I understand that insurance is not healthcare but please explain to me how I should access healthcare for myself and kids without insurance.
I finally have access to healthcare after several years without because I can now purchase health insurance. Even the ability for people like me to purchase health insurance is unacceptable to every motherfucker that was on the debate stage last night.
I would love to be able to buy in to Medicare but I don’t see that happening any time soon. I’m old enough to remember when the Democratic nominee for VP supported Medicare buy in- until it was a possibility and then he changed his mind.
Let’s try to keep what we have and expand it over time. Honestly that is he best we can hope for.
Matt McIrvin
@MomSense: We could have a British-style NHS. It’s really National Insurance, of course, but nobody individually has to mess with an insurance policy to access free services.
Richard Mayhew
@ellennellee: @Thoughtful Today:
Okay, tell me how you think you can assemble a winning coalition of 218-51/60-1-5?
The PPACA winning coalition was assembled after the other party royally fucked up a major war of choice, and saw a city drown in the 2006 cycle combined with the other party getting (righly) blamed for an economic crash that had people scrambling for the 1929 policy prescriptions for what not to do and every break going the right way for the winning coalition to get elected.
As it was, the PPACA coalition had less than a handful of votes to spare.
So how do we assemble a winning coalition for an even bigger and more disruptive to the status quo (a disruption that really pounds on core voting groups (people with good employer sponsored coverage))?
Until there is a reasonable plan (50 state strategy is a slogan, not a plan) then these are either noble aspirations with no chance of implementation or public self pleasuring.
MomSense
@Matt McIrvin:
I’m with @Richard Mayhew: in that I don’t see a winning coalition to create a UK style NHS right now. It is more likely that increasing numbers of employers will find a way to subsidize employers so they can seek insurance on the exchanges coupled with gradual expansion of Medicare and Medicaid.
By way of disclosure, I did a lot of unpaid work (averaged more than 20 hours a week)on passing the PPACA and it was a slog. All the discussion of ObamaCare not going far enough really grate on me since we worked fucking hard with a lot of opposition and I honestly do not think we could have gotten anything more. Just sustaining the volunteer energy it required was a lot of work. It’s kind of a miracle it came together at all given how many twists of fate happened along the way.
Chyron HR
@Thoughtful Today:
When people describe expanding access to healthcare is a “crushing defeat for true progressives”, they’re making fun of you guys, not providing you with a rallying cry.
Richard Mayhew
@Matt McIrvin: How do we get there?
And is that actually desirable? NHS cuts out the insurance functionality but the costs/results are only OK compared to OECD excluding the US. Is that the only route we want to pursue with the knowledge that the NHS is a very unique system in the OECD and other OECD schemas are both closer to current US patterns and NHS came from a very unique set of circumstances that are unlikely to be replicated in the US.
MomSense
@Richard Mayhew:
What do you think of the Swiss model?
Richard Mayhew
@MomSense: I think that is a kissing cousin of where the ACA is heading towards for the non-working poor/non-elderly population of the US. It achieves near universal coverage at a decent price (although compared to the rest of the OECD, the Swiss still spend a bit much instead of Oh My God, we just wrote how big of a check for shitty care that the US says daily), so I would take the Swiss system, warts and all as a decent intermediate term goal.
magurakurin
@Thoughtful Today:
Medicare is health insurance. It’s not a question of thinking bigger. There are political realities. There is no way to implement single payer as Sanders is proposing it. It can only be done over a long process. That’s just reality. I’d be more impressed if Sanders was proposing revisiting the public option being part of the PPACA. But unicorns are good too.
WereBear
@Thoughtful Today: it’s nice to imagine building something better from the ground up but it’s hardly practical with so many highly paid thumbs in the pie. Why do you think it took a century to get what we have now?
It’s like saying “nitrogen is so much more abundant than oxygen, let’s switch!”
Another Holocene Human
@WereBear: Wow.
Another Holocene Human
@WereBear: You’d think lowering Medicare to 55 would be an easy sell. Raise payroll tax a penny. Lower costs long term because enrollees will start less sick.
Can’t even do that with a D majority.
Kerry Reid
“Modest gains.”
MomSense
@Richard Mayhew:
I agree completely.
Chris
@lowercase steve:
Wingnut Uncle had it all worked out that the ACA was a stealth socialist plot to submit our private health insurance companies to death by slow strangulation until none of them are left and the people have no choice but to turn to the false messiah of Big Government which will then impose an American NHS.
I could only read it and wish that it were true, and that they’d get a move on.
Thoughtful Today
Richard, the correct way to look at that “math” of yours is:
1
5
218 – 51 (60)
You start with a President that supports superior policies (and won’t change their mind), currently that’s Bernie Sanders.
That President hopefully has the opportunity to appoint Supreme Court Justices that replace those that would rule against those policies.
And you try to elect enough Representatives and Senators to get those policies enacted.
It takes time, hopefully sooner than MomSense has Grandchildren, but it’s achievable.
I get that you claim not to understand this, Richard, it’s part of what I find increasingly dishonest about you.
Richard Mayhew
@Thoughtful Today: so 2022 at the earliest….