Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Number Of Americans Without Insurance Rises For First Time In A Decade Amid Political War Over Health Law
The New York Times: Share Of Americans With Health Insurance Declined In 2018
Fewer Americans are living in poverty but, for the first time in years, more of them lack health insurance. About 27.5 million people, or 8.5 percent of the population, lacked health insurance for all of 2018, up from 7.9 percent the year before, the Census Bureau reported Tuesday. It was the first increase since the Affordable Care Act passed in 2010, and experts said it was at least partly the result of the Trump administration’s efforts to undermine that law. (Casselman, Sanger-Katz and Smialek, 9/10)
The Associated Press: Share Of Uninsured Americans Rises For 1st Time In A Decade
The data suggest that the current economic expansion, now the longest on record at more than 10 years, is still struggling to provide widespread benefits to the U.S. population. Solid gains in household incomes over the past four years have returned the median only to where it was two decades ago. And despite strong growth last year in the number of Americans working full time and year-round, the number of people with private health insurance remained flat. (Rugaber, 9/10)
Modern Healthcare: Medicaid Coverage Decline Drove Higher Uninsured Rate In 2018
The overall uninsured rate increased despite a lower poverty rate and growth in workers' earnings. A separate Census Bureau report also released Tuesday showed that the poverty rate in 2018 decreased 0.5 percentage points to 11.8% — the first time in 11 years the poverty rate was significantly lower than in 2007, the year before the most recent economic recession. (Livingston, 9/10)
The Washington Post: More Americans Go Without Health Coverage Despite Strong Economy, Census Bureau Finds Add To List
Taken together, the census numbers paint a portrait of an economy pulled in different directions, with the falling poverty rate coinciding with high inequality and the growing cadre of people at financial risk because they do not have health coverage. As more Americans found jobs, the poverty rate fell last year to its lowest level since 2001, and middle-class income inched marginally higher. Median U.S. income — the point at which half of U.S. families earn more and half earn less — topped $63,000 for the first time, although it was roughly the same level as it was 20 years ago, after adjusting for inflation. (Goldstein and Long, 9/10)
NPR: Fewer Children Had Health Insurance In 2018 Than Year Before, Census Data Shows
For decades, getting more children to have health insurance was a cause with strong bipartisan support, and the uninsured rate has steadily declined. Now that trend is reversing. For the second year in a row, there was an uptick — 5.5% of children under age 19 did not have health insurance last year. "It's a very smart investment to make sure that kids get Medicaid when they need it," says Joan Alker, executive director of the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families, which has been tracking the decline in enrollment for the main health care safety net programs for children. "And that's exactly the opposite of what's happening today." (Simmons-Duffin, 9/10)
The Wall Street Journal: Number Of Uninsured Americans Rises For First Time In Decade
The growth in the uninsured population is bad news for the health-insurance industry. Insurers have benefited from overall expansion in their enrollment under the 2010 law, much of it in Medicaid, because states increasingly turn to private companies to manage the program. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, payments to Medicaid managed-care companies added up to $264 billion in fiscal 2017, or around 46% of total Medicaid spending. (Armour, 9/10)
Politico: Number Of Uninsured Americans Rises For The First Time Since Obamacare
Still, the nation’s uninsured rate isn't nearly as high as it was a decade ago, before Obamacare's enactment in 2010. However, the numbers show that insurance gains under the health care law have stalled and are appearing to reverse as the Trump administration focuses on paring back the law's insurance markets and shrinking enrollment in safety net programs like Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program. (Pradhan, 9/10)
Kaiser Health News: Breaking A 10-Year Streak, The Number Of Uninsured Americans Rises
Chris Pope, a senior fellow with the conservative Manhattan Institute, also said he considered the change “fairly small” and likely due to increasing wages “pushing people above the income eligibility cutoff in Medicaid expansion states.” But he suggested that next year would be a better indicator of how changes in the ACA are playing out. (Galewitz, 9/10)
The Hill: Insurance Figures Give Democrats New Line Of Attack Against Trump
“Trump and Republicans sabotaged the Affordable Care Act at every turn,” Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), another White House hopeful, tweeted on Tuesday. “They played politics with health care and now Americans are paying the price.” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who regularly polls in the top three among Democratic presidential candidates, said Trump has “lied” about strengthening the health care system. “Instead, he has done everything he can to sabotage the Affordable Care Act,” Sanders tweeted Tuesday. (Hellmann, 9/11)
CNN: Uninsured Rate Ticks Up Amid 2020 Debate Over American Health Care
Since taking office, Trump and the GOP have sought to dismantle the Affordable Care Act. The President cut the open enrollment period for the exchanges and slashed funding for advertising and enrollment assistance. Also, the Republican-led Congress effectively eliminated the mandate that Americans obtain insurance or pay a penalty, starting this year. (Luhby, 9/10)
The Wall Street Journal: Health-Insurance Consumers To Get $743 Million In Rebates Under ACA Rule
Health insurers are expected to pay out a record $743 million to consumers this month under an Affordable Care Act rule that requires refunds if the companies don’t spend a big enough share of premium dollars on health care. The sum, which will go to about 2.7 million consumers who bought individual health policies from insurers, will be more than four times the amount paid out last year. The payout also dwarfs the next-highest total, $399 million in 2012, the first year of the refunds, according to a new analysis from the Kaiser Family Foundation, which calculated the total rebate payments by reviewing federal filings. (Wilde Mathews and Armour, 9/10)
Regional news outlets report on the change in states' uninsured rates —
Dallas Observer: Texas Leads Nation In Lack Of Health Insurance, Census Figures Show
For a second consecutive year, more people in Texas were without health insurance in 2018 than any other state, according to U.S. Census Bureau figures released Tuesday. Texas leads the nation in uninsured residents, both in terms of raw numbers and as a percentage of the population, according to the report. The state's uninsured rate was about twice that of the nation overall. (Allen, 9/11)
Texas Tribune: Texas Has The Most People Without Health Insurance In The Nation — Again
The rate of Texans without health insurance rose for the second year in a row, making it once again the most uninsured state in the nation, according to data released Tuesday by the U.S. Census Bureau.In 2018, 17.7% of Texas residents — about 5 million people — had no health coverage, up from 17.3% in 2017. (Fernández, 9/10)
Austin American-Statesman: Percentage Of Texans Without Health Insurance Grows
“There are lots of different factors that affect health insurance coverage, including changes in economic conditions, shifts in the demographic composition of the population, policy changes of the state and federal level,” said Laryssa Mykyta, a health and disability statistics official with the Census Bureau, during a phone call with news media Tuesday. (Chang ,9/10)
The Oklahoman: Oklahoma Uninsured Rate Still Second-Highest
Oklahoma’s rate of residents without health insurance remained at 14.2% in 2018, the second highest rate of uninsured in the country, according to a U.S. Census Bureau report released Tuesday. An estimated 548,000 Oklahomans lacked health insurance in 2018, up from an estimated 545,000 in 2017, the Census Bureau reported.Only six states had a rate higher than 12%, according to the report. Of those, only Alaska has voted to expand Medicaid. (Casteel, 9/11)
Journalstar.Com: Nebraska's Uninsured Rate Holds Steady
Nebraska's rate of people without health insurance held steady in 2018. ... However, Nebraska's rank among the states for the number of uninsured people dropped from 28th in 2017 to 30th last year.Among states bordering Nebraska, only Iowa and Colorado have lower rates of uninsured residents. (9/10)
Cleveland Plain Dealer: Ohio And U.S. Uninsured Rates Increase In 2018, Census Bureau Says
The uninsured population grew 1.9 million nationally last year, marking the first increase since 2009, while median household income was relatively flat and the poverty rate dropped, the U.S. Census Bureau reported Tuesday. The percent of people without insurance for the entire year increased from 7.9%, or 25.6 million people, in 2017 to 8.5%, or 27.5 million in 2018, the Census Bureau estimated. (Exner, 9/10)
Cleveland Plain Dealer: Ohio One Of Eight States To See Uninsured Rate Rise, 58,000 More People Uninsured
"The Center for Community Solutions is concerned that the number of uninsured Ohioans is climbing, but even more concerning is the increase in the number of children in the United States who are uninsured,” John Corlett, president and executive director of nonprofit think tank The Center for Community Solutions, said in a prepared statement. “Many of these kids were likely eligible for Medicaid coverage but weren’t enrolled either because of red tape or because of trimmed outreach efforts.” (Christ, 9/10)
Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Georgia Adds 36,000 To Uninsured Rolls, Ranks Third Worst In U.S.
Even as the economy added jobs, more people in Georgia and the U.S. went without health insurance all last year, according to figures for 2018 just released by the U.S. Census. The South in general saw a dramatic increase of uninsured children, the only region to see such a trend. (Hart, 9/10)
New Orleans Times-Picayune: 'We're Doing Something Right In Louisiana': More People Than Ever Have Health Insurance Here
The number of Americans across the U.S. without health insurance rose for the first time in a decade, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. But in Louisiana, more people are covered than ever before, bucking the national trend. Louisiana’s uninsured rate declined slightly from 8.4% in 2017 to 8% percent in 2018, reflecting 19,000 newly covered residents, according the bureau's annual report on health insurance coverage released Tuesday. Nationally, the uninsured rate is 8.9%. (Woodruff, 9/10)
