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Obamacare Slowly Working For Our Young Adults
President Obama signing the Affordable Health Care law
In just the past five months, the number of 18- to 25-year olds without health insurance has fallen from 24.5% to 23%. Not a great amount, but when the Affordable Care Act provision allowing children to remain on their parents’ health insurance took effect in September of 2010, 28% of our young adults were uninsured.
The overall insured rate is 16.9% of all adults over 18. That’s 39.57 million Americans. The lowest rate is among seniors over 65, with only 3% of them not covered by Medicare or private insurance. That’s 1.22 million seniors, meaning that 38.35 million Americans between 18 and 65 have no health insurance.
There are two other statistics that are relevant to the healthcare law debate. The number of adults who are getting their health insurance from their employers has dropped from 49.8% in January 2008 to 44% now, the lowest Gallup has ever recorded. And the number getting their insurance through Medicare, Medicaid and military/veterans benefits is a high of 26.1%.
In the mid-2000s (I think it was 2005), the State of Georgia reported that half the children of WalMart employees in the state were on the S-CHIP portion of Medicaid. The following year, the state ran out of S-CHIP funds. More and more employers have moved to the so-called WalMart model – hire only part-time employees so you don’t have to provide access to health insurance. This double-whammies the employees, severely limiting their earnings and burdening them with no insurance for their health needs.
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