Children’s Uninsured Rate Drops Significantly Thanks to the Affordable Care Act

By now you have heard the news that from 2013 to 2014 the country saw the greatest single year decline in the number of uninsured Americans on record with the overall uninsured rate falling to 10.4%.

For children, using the American Community Survey data that was just released, the decline was smaller, but only because kids were better off to begin with. In 2013, 7.1% of kids were uninsured, in 2014 only 6% of kids were uninsured thanks to the Affordable Care Act.

20150916_kids_uninsured_rate_2014_draft

That means that over 837,000 kids picked up coverage in 2014 leaving a remaining 4.4 million uninsured. That is of course 4.4 million too many, but I for one am thrilled and even a bit surprised by how big the drop was.

We will dive into these numbers in greater detail as we analyze specific state trends for our annual report looking at uninsured children that we are aiming to release at the end of October.

But in the short term, here are some teasers – the state with the biggest decline in uninsured children by far is Nevada — whose uninsured rate fell from 14.9% (the highest in the country) to 9.6%. Nevada will no longer rank as the worst state in the country leapfrogging over Texas, Alaska and Arizona to number 48. Many believe that Nevada’s early embrace of the Medicaid expansion has a lot to do with this outcome.

Most importantly, today’s numbers underscore how significant the Affordable Care Act has been in making families lives better.

Joan Alker is the Executive Director of the Center for Children and Families and a Research Professor at the Georgetown McCourt School of Public Policy.

Latest