The big question Republicans always ask when the Obama administration announces Obamacare enrollments is "yeah, but how many were uninsured?" The administration has an answer:
16.4 million.
In releasing the latest estimates, Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia M. Burwell called it "the largest reduction in the uninsured in four decades." […]
Most of those gaining coverage—14.1 million adults—got their insurance after the law's big expansion began at the end of 2013.
Another 2.3 million people had gained coverage previously. Those were young adults allowed to remain on a parent's plan until age 26 under one of the law's most popular provisions. […]
Since the start of last year, the uninsured rate dropped by more than 12 percentage points among Hispanics, more than 9 percentage points among African-Americans and more than 5 percentage points among whites.
That's a
35 percent reduction in the number of uninsured. If all the states that refused to expand Medicaid under the law decided to stop paying politics with people's lives, another
4 million or so would be included.
The law will be five years old next week, on March 23. In a matter of months, the Supreme Court might decide to gut it, rolling back coverage to some 7.5 million, give or take a million or so. Just something else for Justices John Robert and Anthony Kennedy to ponder over the next few months.