The uninsured rate
dropped significantly in 2014, according to the regular Gallup survey, and Kentucky and Arkansas led the way thanks largely to Medicaid expansion.
Nationwide, the uninsured rate dropped 3.5 percentage points last year, from 17.3% to 13.8%, the lowest annualized rate across the seven years of Well-Being Index measurement. No state reported a statistically significant increase in the percentage of uninsured in 2014 compared with 2013. […]
Collectively, the uninsured rate in states that have chosen to expand Medicaid and set up their own state exchanges or partnerships in the health insurance marketplace declined significantly more last year than the rate in states that did not take these steps. The uninsured rate declined 4.8 points in the 21 states that implemented both of these measures, compared with a 2.7-point drop across the 29 states that have implemented only one or neither of these actions.
It's not hard to understand how the states that put the most effort into seeing expansion of insurance under Obamacare had the highest success rate, but it shows how politically fragile those gains are with Republicans still wanting to kill the law. Arkansas and Kentucky both have plenty of foes of the program in their legislatures, ready to pounce at the first opportunity.
That opportunity could come this June, when the Supreme Court will hand down a ruling in King v. Burwell, the challenge to insurance subsidies in states that are using the federal insurance exchange. That would be the "body blow" to the law Republicans are all but demanding the court gives them.