September 15, 2020

The Number of Uninsured Keeps Going Up Under Donald Trump

I see via the Washington Post that the Census Bureau has released its latest estimate of the uninsured population in the United States through 2019. Here it is:

The number of uninsured dropped steadily through 2016 but has risen slowly ever since Donald Trump took office. Let’s compare this to the CDC’s survey, which has always been my go-to source for the most accurate numbers. I haven’t checked in with them for a while, so here’s the latest, including the first quarter of 2020:

This tells roughly the same story. The data is a little bit noisier since the CDC reports quarterly, and it shows that the increase started around 2018. Either way, it appears that Trump’s effort to seed chaos in the Obamacare signup process had a modest success. The net increase in the uninsured comes to a little more than 1 percent, which represents about 3 million fewer people with health coverage. Nice work, Donald.

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In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

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