For the first time since the Affordable Care Act began, the uninsured rate went up in 2017, despite surprisingly robust Obamacare enrollments at the end of the year. Gallup has been tracking the uninsured rate since the beginning of 2008 every quarter, showing steady increases in the number of people who have health insurance since 2013, when the Affordable Care Act kicked in. Then Trump got elected and as with everything else good, it's eroding.
Who is losing insurance? Just who you'd expect.
Black and Hispanic adults saw a 2.3 and 2.2 point increase in their uninsured rate in 2017, respectively. By comparison, the uninsured rate for whites grew less than 1.0 point over that same period. The percentage of low-income adults without health insurance in 2017 rose 2.0 points, while middle- and high-income Americans' saw their uninsured rates increase by 1.4 and 0.8 points, respectively.
People of color and people with an household income of less than $36,000 per year are most at risk to lose insurance or be unable to get it. Additionally, "the uninsured rate among adults aged 18-25 rose by 2.0 points" which will further destabilize the market as insurers have to raise rates on the older and sicker people still in it. But the most significant change is "the decline in the percentage of Americans purchasing their own plans, likely through ACA healthcare exchanges," a reversal of positive trends of people using the exchanges, where about 80 percent of customers qualify for federal subsidies.
This despite an economy that continues to be strong. Between the out-and-out sabotage that drove insurers out of some markets or to raise premiums, the continued "Obamacare is dead" refrain from Trump and Republicans, and in general rising uncertainty, don't expect this bad trend to stop. Now that the individual mandate has been repealed in the last-minute tax giveaway to the rich, it's definitely going to continue.