Health and Healthcare

Obamacare Sign-Ups Top 8 Million

145922793
Thinkstock
At a press conference on Thursday afternoon, President Obama announced that the number of Americans using the public exchanges to enroll in a health insurance plan rose to 8 million after the deadline passed for completing applications begun by March 31. By the end of March, sign-ups had reached the Obama administration’s target of 7 million enrollments.

The state of California, which runs its own exchange called CoveredCA, said Thursday that more than 200,000 consumers completed their applications between April 1 and April 15. The state has enrolled nearly 1.4 million residents since the sign-up period began.

In a Wednesday blog post at Gallup, there is this bit of startling news:

There has been a statistically significant and meaningfully large decline in the percentage of uninsured U.S. adults. The uninsured rate peaked at 18.0% in the third quarter of 2013, the highest rate measured since Gallup and Healthways began tracking in 2008. The uninsured rate has been consistently trending downward since then, falling to 15.0% in March and further to 12.9% for April 1-14 polling. If the rate for the first half of April holds throughout the month, it will be the lowest monthly uninsured rate in 76 months of tracking.

According to a second Gallup report on Wednesday, 4% of Americans who now have health insurance did not have health insurance last year. That represents about one-third of all Americans who say they enrolled in a new health insurance plan this year. The rest purchased replacement policies.

Another data point from Gallup: the newly insured are “much younger” than the overall U.S. population. The 18- to 29-year-olds account for 30% of all new health insurance enrollees, but only 21% of the overall U.S. population. More than a third of these Americans — 37% — did not purchase their insurance through the Obamacare exchanges, while 24% did.

Perhaps that explains President Obama’s request that his Republican opponents “admit the Affordable Care Act is working. I think we can agree it’s well past time to move on.” Senator Ted Cruz, a Republican from Texas, responded with this tweet: “The repeal debate is far from over.”

ALSO READ: America’s Most (and Least) Healthy Cities

The Average American Has No Idea How Much Money You Can Make Today (Sponsor)

The last few years made people forget how much banks and CD’s can pay. Meanwhile, interest rates have spiked and many can afford to pay you much more, but most are keeping yields low and hoping you won’t notice.

But there is good news. To win qualified customers, some accounts are paying almost 10x the national average! That’s an incredible way to keep your money safe and earn more at the same time. Our top pick for high yield savings accounts includes other benefits as well. You can earn up to 3.80% with a Checking & Savings Account today Sign up and get up to $300 with direct deposit. No account fees. FDIC Insured.

Click here to see how much more you could be earning on your savings today. It takes just a few minutes to open an account to make your money work for you.

 

Our top pick for high yield savings accounts includes other benefits as well. You can earn up to 4.00% with a Checking & Savings Account from Sofi. Sign up and get up to $300 with direct deposit. No account fees. FDIC Insured.

1 https://www.fdic.gov/national-rates-and-rate-caps

Thank you for reading! Have some feedback for us?
Contact the 24/7 Wall St. editorial team.

AI Portfolio

Discover Our Top AI Stocks

Our expert who first called NVIDIA in 2009 is predicting 2025 will see a historic AI breakthrough.

You can follow him investing $500,000 of his own money on our top AI stocks for free.