More than 10 million people got covered by health insurance over the past year, bringing the rate of uninsured down from 17.7 percent to 12.4 percent, a new survey shows.
The data from the left-leaning Urban Institute shows 10.6 million people gained health insurance between September 2013 and September 2014, thanks in large part to new health insurance exchanges and the expansion of Medicaid in 27 states plus Washington, D.C. Others may have been covered by employers under tighter new rules on who must be covered.
“The survey findings show that uninsured adults ages 18 to 64 gained coverage across all age, gender, race and ethnicity groups,” the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which helped pay for the study, said in a statement.
The Obama administration says just under 7 million people signed up for private insurance, often with federal subsidies, on the new exchanges over the past year. They expect 9 million to do so this year. So far, 765,000 people have signed up this year, about 300,000 of them in the last week of November, and about half are new enrollees.
IN-DEPTH
— Maggie Fox
