That said, this figure was measured just before the changes to Medicaid rules were implemented.
During the first quarter of this year, the number of Americans without health insurance dropped to a record low of 7.7 percent. Unfortunately, this record-breaking figure was achieved just ahead of the expiration of the rule implemented during the pandemic.
In April, the Medicaid coverage of 15 million people was on shaky ground, possibly increasing uninsured rates.
The data was measured in a survey released by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) this month. It showed that in Q1, the uninsured rate among Americans fell to 7.7 percent, after having been 8.3 percent in the fourth quarter of 2022. That said, the CDC also noted that it expects that the percentage of people without health insurance will have climbed in the second quarter of this year when the impact of the Medicaid enrollment changes is made clear.
In 2020, changes were made to the Medicaid enrollment rules in response to the pandemic. Medicaid is the government program to provide coverage for low-income Americans. During the pandemic-era changes, the federal government banned states from removing people from Medicaid unless they died or moved out of the state. This was notable because people can lose their Medicaid coverage for any number of reasons, such as the loss of documentation, fluctuating income levels, or others.
During the time when the pandemic-era rules were in place, health insurance coverage rates boomed.
Studies cited by the CDC showed that the ban on removing people from Medicaid enrollment increased the number of covered people by 23.3 million. This caused the uninsured rate across the country to plummet.
However, as of early August, at least 3.9 million people had been removed from Medicaid coverage since the expiration of the “continuous enrollment” provision. This, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation’s tracker.
The very low rate of people without health insurance at the start of this year was extremely low compared to the 18.2 percent uninsured rate that was measured in 2010, right before the introduction of the Affordable Care Act, also commonly known as Obamacare.
