The Commonwealth Fund reports that the number of uninsured is inching back up:
Commonwealth’s data shows that the uninsured rate is up nearly three points since 2016, which represents about 4 million people. This surprised me, so I checked the other usual sources for information about the uninsured. Here’s Gallup:
Gallup hasn’t released its latest numbers yet, but they show an increase since 2016 of about one percentage point through the end of 2017. My usual preferred source for estimates of the uninsured is the quarterly CDC survey, but they lag considerably behind other pollsters. Here’s their latest:
If you squint, they show an increase of about half a percentage point since 2016, but that’s from autumn of last year—and it’s going to be a while before we get more recent data from the CDC.
Putting this all together, my guess is that the uninsured rate has gone up since 2016, but probably not by as much as Commonwealth says. If I had to, I’d put my money on an increase of one percentage point or so, which represents about 2 million people.
That’s still a lot of people. They’re the ones paying the price for Donald Trump’s furious effort to sabotage everything Obama-related.
