January 23, 2019

The Uninsured Rate Has Soared Under Trump — Maybe

Today Gallup announced that the uninsured rate for all adults had reached 13.7 percent, a rise of nearly three percentage points since Donald Trump was elected:

I’m not quite sure how seriously to take this. There are various surveys of the uninsured rate, and I generally consider the CDC survey to be most accurate. However, it’s also the most out-of-date: the most recent CDC survey is from the second quarter of 2018, nearly a full year ago. The CDC and Gallup survey also measure slightly different things. That said, they produced pretty similar estimates all the way through 2016. Then they started to diverge:

So who’s right? For now, I’d put my money on the CDC, and suggest that there’s no reason to panic over Gallup’s surprisingly high number. But that’s not a sure thing. We’ll just have to wait and see if the CDC number stays flat, or if it starts to catch up to Gallup later in the year.

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

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