Republican lawmakers should be appalling…
They’ve been working to make this happen since 2010….
The number of Americans without health insurance has increased by 7 million since President Donald Trump took office, new Gallup data released Wednesday shows.
The country’s uninsured rate has steadily ticked upward since 2016, rising from a low of 10.9 percent in late 2016 to 13.7 percent — a four-year high.
The uninsured rate is still well below where it was in 2013, before the Affordable Care Act’s expansion of health insurance coverage began. But under the Trump administration, a trend of Americans gaining coverage through the private marketplaces and the Medicaid expansion appears to be reversing.
Certain demographic groups are experiencing a greater loss of coverage than others. Gallup data shows, for example, that Americans who are younger and lower-income have seen a greater decline in insurance coverage than those who are older and wealthier. Women have had insurance rates decline more quickly than men.
This trend is especially surprising given that over the same time period, the unemployment rate has been declining. Usually, when more people have jobs, it means more people with access to employer-sponsored health insurance. But even during this period of job growth, America’s uninsured rate keeps climbing.
Trump wasn’t able to repeal Obamacare. So why are uninsured rates going up?
The Affordable Care Act is still standing law. Republicans weren’t able to repeal Obamacare when they controlled both houses of Congress. And the one big change they did accomplish — repealing the individual mandate — didn’t go into effect until this year. So why was the uninsured rate rising from 2016 through 2018?…
image…The Atlantic