Campaign Action
While a bunch of Republican wankers are still trying to repeal Obamacare (and, really? Rick Santorum? They invited Rick Santorum to their press conference? Why?) Obamacare is still racking up successes. The U.S. Census Bureau reports that the uninsured rate dropped again in 2016.
The uninsured rate fell to 8.8 percent last year, a 0.3 percentage point decrease from 2015, the U.S. Census Bureau reported Tuesday.
A total of 29 million Americans were uninsured all of last year, a drop of 900,000 from 2015.
It marked the third straight year in which the Census Bureau recorded a drop in the share of Americans without health care coverage. Prior to full implementation of the Affordable Care Act, the uninsured rate stood at 13.3 percent.
Popular vote loser Donald Trump, however, is doing his damnedest to turn all that progress around, and it seems to be working to an extent. Both Gallup and the Commonwealth Fund have seen an uptick in the uninsured rate in their surveys this year. Gallup's latest has the new uninsured rate at 11.7 percent, up 0.8 point since last year while Commonwealth sees an increase in certain demographic groups, "including adults ages 35 through 49 and individuals with incomes at or above 400 percent of the federal poverty level." They found that one-third of the uninsured they surveyed knew about Obamacare, knew that the exchange was available to them but didn't shop for or sign up for insurance because they thought it would be repealed.
This is the new reality that Republicans have created for themselves—they entirely own what happens with Obamacare and everything their president does to it now. Every single person who loses health insurance because of sabotage? It's on them.