Louisiana’s uninsured health rate falls

By Michael Patrick Welch
Contributing Writer

Just as America is very likely to soon lose the relatively new Affordable Care Act (also known as “Obamacare”), a Gallup poll shows that Louisiana’s number of uninsured residents fell to 12.5 percent in 2016, down from 21.7 percent in 2013.

Gallup phoned 177,192 adults aged 18 and older between Jan. 2 and Dec. 30, 2016, and found Louisiana to be among the top 10 states with the greatest reductions in uninsured adults. Louisiana is one of six states where the uninsured rate dropped 10 percent.

Naturally, the greatest reductions in uninsured adults occurred in states that had expanded the federal-state program for low-income residents. Former Gov. Bobby Jindal, who even now enjoys free government health insurance, had previously blocked the ACA’s expansion in Louisiana.

Current Louisiana governor, John Bell Edwards, made expanding Medicaid his first order of business upon taking office in January 2016. Since Edwards expanded Medicaid as outlined in the ACA, the rate of uninsured Louisiana residents has dropped 9.2 percent. Around 400,000 adult Louisianans have enrolled as of Feb. 6, according to the latest Louisiana Department of Health figures.

Kentucky and Arkansas have seen the greatest reductions in their adult uninsured rates, with both dropping at least 12 percent. An additional 530,000 Arkansas residents, more than 10 percent of the state’s population, enrolled in Medicaid when the program was finally expanded there in 2014.

Still, Kentucky Republican Gov. Matt Bevin threatened to repeal the Medicaid expansion in his state. But realizing that taking thousands of people’s health care away would not be popular, both Kentucky and Arkansas have since decided to keep the ACA, while tinkering with certain aspects. Bevin renamed his state’s health care plan and added changes designed to help people find jobs and eventually exit the government program. Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson, also a Republican, also proposed small premiums for people who use the ACA but whose incomes are nonetheless above the federal poverty line of $11,880 per year, per person.

For the ninth year in a row, Massachusetts had the lowest uninsured rate nationally. Nationwide, falling to 10.9 percent in 2016, from 17.3 percent in 2013. In Louisiana, the number of insured adults remains above the national rate, which fell to 17.3 percent in 2013 to 10.9 percent in 2016.

The Affordable Care Act had several other goals besides increasing the number of uninsured. According to the poll, not all of those goals are being met: “Fewer Americans rated their health as excellent’ in 2016 than in 2010 when the healthcare law was signed into effect,” the poll states. “Obesity, diabetes and clinical diagnoses of depression are at their highest points since Gallup and Healthways began measurement in 2008.”

As the ACA’s rolls have only increased and never decreased, however, proponents of Obamacare consider this newest poll a definitive response to criticism that the ACA forced many out of their previously existing plans.

This article originally published in the February 13, 2017 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.