STUDY: Obamacare Has Given 3.4 Million Young Americans Access To Health Insurance

[ProSense]

STUDY: Obamacare Has Given 3.4 Million Young Americans Access To Health Insurance

By Sy Mukherjee

According to a new Commonwealth Fund study published Friday, Obamacare has sharply reduced the number of young Americans lacking health coverage, reversing a decade-long trend that saw a rise in the ranks of the young and uninsured. The study also finds that uninsurance rates for Americans as a whole remained relatively unchanged, leading the authors to emphasize that full implementation of the Affordable Care Act will be critical to securing Americans’ health coverage.

The report, based on a biennial survey of Americans’ access to health insurance, found that adults aged 19 to 25 had seen their uninsurance rates fall “from 48 percent in 2010 to 41 percent in 2012, from 13.6 million (young adults) to 11.7 million — a decline of 1.9 million.” And those are just the numbers for a single year — since the health care law was passed in 2010, a full 3.4 million young Americans have become newly-insured. That represents a 10 percent upward swing in two years:



Researchers say that this positive development is almost entirely a consequence of Obamacare’s provision allowing adults up to age 26 to remain on their parents’ health plans. Still, 46 percent of all adults, or “an estimated 84 million people, did not have insurance for the full year or were underinsured and unprotected from high out-of-pocket costs” in 2012. Addressing these Americans’ high medical costs and lack of access to health insurance demonstrates the need to carefully implement the rest of the health care law, as highlighted by Obamacare’s success in providing young Americans with coverage.

- more -

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/04/26/1925661/obamacare-young-americans-access/

[kentuck]

1. I wonder how many have had to use it?

It doesn't matter if they use it or not, the insurance companies will get their money..

[Cal Carpenter]

3. Yep - "Access to health insurance"

is not the same as 'able to receive timely and thorough health CARE' but that doesn't seem to matter to many. As long as it looks good on paper it doesn't matter what the real outcomes are. (edited to add: or how temporary the benefit is for these young people, who will likely be shit outta luck like the rest of us after they hit the magic age of ...er...26)


But yep, the important thing is that we don't take the insurance companies out of the equation with their record profits and shareholders and whatnot.

[ProSense]

4. Well,

"I wonder how many have had to use it?"

...if they had preventive care is free.

That includes:

• Some 6.6 million people ages 19 through 25 who have been able to stay on their parents' insurance plans and more than than 3 million young adults getting health insurance.
  
  
• 17 million getting some kind of free preventive service, like flu shots, and 34 million Medicare recipients getting free preventive services in 2012;
  
  
• 17 million children with pre-existing conditions being protected against being uninsured;
  
  
• More than 107,000 adults with pre-existing conditions finally having insurance under the federally run insurance program;
  
  
• 21 million received care from expanded community health centers, 3 million more than previously served;
  
  
• $1.1 billion in rebates, an average of $151 per family paid by insurers that failed to meet the benchmark of 80 to 85 percent of premium revenues on medical claims or quality improvements;
  
  
• Since 2010, more than 6.3 million older or disabled people have saved more than $6.3 billion on prescription drugs;

- more -

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/03/25/1196892/-An-Affordable-Care-Act-report-card-three-years-in

[former9thward]

2. They got access but their parents had to pay for it.

The insurance premiums were raised and the insurance companies got to insure the most healthy sub-group of Americans.

[Scurrilous]

5. K & R