Eight states showed “statistically significant” improvements during 2015 in the percentages of their working-age populations that have health insurance, according to a federal study. The states were Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan, and New York.
More modest gains were seen in other states, including Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, and Rhode Island.
These were among the results of the latest report on the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS).
The survey has monitored nation’s health since 1957, using a broad range of Census Bureau and other data. The NHIS is produced by the National Center for Health Statistics, a unit of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The report expressed these trends in terms of the percentage of the population that lacks health insurance. A decline in the percentage of Americans without insurance translates into an increase in the percentage with insurance.
The NHIS found that coverage has improved significantly in the past two years. In September of 2015, the cutoff date for the data, 28.8 million persons of all ages were not insured when they were interviewed for the survey. Compared to the prior years, that means a total of 16 million have gained insurance since 2013, including 7.2 million who got coverage since 2014.
Among adults aged 18–64, the percentage who were uninsured decreased from 20.4% in 2013 and 16.3% in 2014 to just 12.9 % in 2015.
During the same period, the percentage who have private coverage rose to 70% from just over 67% in 2014 and 64% in 2013.
Among children under age 18, the percentage with private coverage improved to 55% last year from 52.6% two years earlier.
Among adults under age 65, the percentage who obtained private coverage through the Health Insurance Marketplace or state-based exchanges increased to 4.2% (11.3 million) in the 2015 survey from 2.5% of working-age Americans (6.7 million) in the fourth quarter of 2014.
From January through September 2015, the percentage of persons without insurance at the time they were interviewed was 9.1% (28.8 million). That means about 7.2 million people gained coverage from 2014, when 11.5% (36.0 million) said they were uninsured.
Rates of coverage differed significantly by age. In the first 9 months of 2015, adults aged 25–34 were more than twice as likely as adults aged 45–64 to be without health insurance coverage (17.9% compared with 8.9%).
Among the 18–24 and 35–44 age groups, about 14.5% said they had no insurance.
By income level, 26.1% of poor working-age adults, 24.1% of near-poor, and 7.7% of those who were not poor had no health insurance at the time they were interviewed.
From 2010 through the first 9 months of 2015, the percentage of adults with insurance improved among all three income groups. The greatest gains were among those who were poor or near-poor.
Rates of insurance coverage were significantly higher in states that have enacted Medicaid expansion, which is intended to cover low-income Americans.
In Medicaid expansion states, the percentage of those uninsured decreased to 10.0% in the first 9 months of 2015 from 18.4% in 2013. In nonexpansion states, the percentage of uninsured decreased to 17.3% from 22.7% in 2013.