The survey revealed that there was a very large group that spent part of last year without coverage.
According to research conducted by the Commonwealth Fund, there were 84 million people – that is, almost half of all American adults of working age – who either went insured for a span of time in 2012, or who had to pay medical costs that were so great that they were considered to be underinsured.
The survey also discovered that the coverage level increased among young adults from 2010 to 2012.
The research conducted by the Commonwealth Fund was called the Biennial Health Insurance Survey. It determined that among American adults between the ages of 19 and 25, the rate of uninsured dropped from having been 48 percent in 2010 to 41 percent in 2012. This was the first time that the rising trend was broken in almost a decade, for that age group.
The report on the study proposes that the Affordable Care Act reversed that health insurance trend.
The reason is because those healthcare reforms from 2010 allowed young adults to remain covered by the health insurance plans of their parents until they reach the age of 26. The full name of the report that was issued to present the survey results was “Insuring the Future: Current Trends in Health Coverage and the Effects of Implementing the Affordable Care Act.
It determined that the proportion of Americans who were underinsured, uninsured, or whose health insurance had gaps had been growing steadily from the year 2003 through 2010. During that time, the number of people who were underinsured exploded to a point that it almost doubled. In 2003, there were 16 million underinsured people in the United States, but that figure rose considerably to 29 million by 2010.
That said, the research also found that from 2010 to 2012, the number of adults who were underinsured experienced a leveling, rising only to 30 million. The researchers concluded that this was, in part, the result of a slowing in the increase of the cost of healthcare, as well as a lower overall consumer spending on health. This was combined with a drop in the household income. However, it also stated that the provisions in the Affordable Care Act were also beginning to make health insurance more affordable to many.
