Increases in Health Insurance Coverage: By The Numbers

Regionally we have seen increases in the number of people with health insurance coverage, especially since the launching of the Affordable Care Act. More than 15,000 additional people living in Herkimer and Oneida Counties now have health insurance than did five years ago.

The graphic below provides some sense of the changes we have seen since 2009 in the numbers of people who have enrolled in insurance. Click to enlarge the graphic.

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Regional Changes in the Percent and Number of Persons Insured Since ACA Implementation

Insurance numbers and percentages for the Herkimer-Oneida Counties region since the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. The data comes from the single year American Communities Survey between 2012 and 2014.

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ACA Program Enrollment Changes In NYS Counties

A recent article from Politico provides some insight into the changes in ACA program enrollment (think "Obamacare") for every county in New York State. Click on the link above to read the article and see how counties that interest you have done. Simply go to the middle portion of the article and hover over any county to see their data.

Gallup Poll: Uninsured Rate Continues to Fall

According to a report by the Gallup pollsters, the percent of the population without health care insurance has continued to fall since reaching a national high of 18% in the third quarter of 2013. These data are based on more than 28,000 interviews with Americans from Jan. 2-Feb. 28, 2014, as part of the Gallup-Healthways Well Being Index. The uninsured rate is on track to be the lowest quarterly level that Gallup and Healthways have measured since 2008.

Based on the graph below, the percent of Americans who are uninsured appears to have been declining since even earlier, from around the second quarter of 2011 when it was 17.4%. Since then (other than the spike in the 3rd quarter of 2013) there appears to be a steady decline in those without insurance.

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According to Gallup, this drop in 2014 could be a result of the Affordable care Act (ACA), which aims to provide healthcare coverage to more Americans through multiple provisions, including federal and state healthcare marketplaces where Americans can purchase health insurance coverage at competitive rates. At the end of February, HHS reported 4 million people have signed up for health insurance coverage through the marketplaces established under the ACA. With the open enrollment period scheduled to close on March 31, the uninsured rate in the U.S. will likely continue to fall.

Regionally, the overall percentage of uninsured residents (the blue line in the chart below) appears to be relatively steady at around 8% of the population. If anything, there appears to be a slight uptick in the numbers since around 2010. What happens to these percentages once post-ACA data becomes available will be interesting to see.

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To get a full review of health insurance coverage for our region between 2009 and 2012, review the table below.

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Regional Characteristics of the Uninsured: 2009 to 2012 ACS Data

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According to a new Gallup survey, the percentage of Americans without health insurance is on track to reach its lowest quarterly rate since 2008. The results are based on telephone interviews conducted as part of the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index survey Jan. 2-Feb. 28, 2014, with a random sample of 28,396 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia.

Based on this survey, the uninsured rate has fallen to 15.9 percent, Gallup reports. By comparison, the uninsured rate in the fourth quarter of 2013 was 17.1 percent. If accurate, that translates to a difference of about 2.5 million adult Americans. The survey's margin of error was one percent.

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The survey shows that the uninsured rate has dropped for almost every major demographic group so far this year. The rate has fallen the most -- 2.8 percent, to 27.9 percent -- among uninsured Americans with an annual household income of less than $36,000 a year. Hispanics remain the subgroup most likely to be uninsured, at the rate of 37.9 percent.

Local uninsured data appears below. It has been gathered from the 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012 American Communities Surveys and put together to allow a comparison of the region's uninsured population over the last several years.

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Please note that the margins of error, NOT SHOWN HERE, can be rather large in some cases, especially when looking at data broken down into smaller and smaller subgroups. So wild swings in the percent uninsured from year to year for some relatively smaller sub-populations are not necessarily meaningful nor significant !

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Implementation of the Affordable Care Act: The Uninsured in Herkimer and Oneida Counties

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, or Affordable Care Act, will soon be ramping up. According to the federal government's Healthcare.gov website, there are three particularly important dates to pay attention to in the near future. These dates are:

• October 1, 2013: When the insurance marketplace open enrollment starts
• January 1, 2014: When health coverage can start
• March 31, 2014: When the open enrollment period ends

Here's a look at insurance coverage for the citizens of Herkimer and Oneida Counties, as well as New York State, as we move toward implementation of this insurance coverage system.

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