Gallup: Uninsured at lowest point since 2008

In a potential boon to Democrats and the Obama administration, a new poll suggests that the number of uninsured Americans has declined significantly since the Affordable Care Act, also known as "Obamacare," launched on Oct. 31.

The poll, conducted by Gallup, found that the number of uninsured Americans dropped to 13.4 percent of the population in April, the lowest percentage since Gallup began asking questions about insurance in 2008.

Some Obamacare supporters might be happy that the drop appears to be a result of the Affordable Care Act and the concurrent expansion of Medicaid in many states.

But others, on both the political right and left, say it's too early to celebrate. Most Americans, Republicans especially, aren't fond of the law. And 13.4 percent uninsured is still a high rate compared to other developed nations, most of which have nationalized health care.

"The thing that strikes me about this is declaring a drop to 13.4 percent as a victory," said David Himmelstein, a professor of public health at the City University of New York, a professor of medicine at Harvard and a cofounder of Physicians for a National Health Program. "Any other developed nation would view that as a disaster."

Gallup's survey, based on interviews with 14,700 Americans, found that the uninsured rate has dropped by 4.6 percentage points from its peak of 18 percent in the third quarter of 2013, immediately prior to the start of the enrollment period for the Affordable Care Act. That timing suggests the drop is due to people signing up for insurance through Obamacare or becoming covered by states' expansion of Medicaid, Gallup and other experts said.

The drops in uninsured were most dramatic among America's minority group and its poor. The number of uninsured African-Americans fell 7.1 percentage points from its 2013 peak to 13.8 percent in April. The uninsured rate for Hispanics decreased 5.5 points to 33.2 percent, according to Gallup. For low-income Americans — households that make less than $36,000 a year — the rate dropped 5.5 points to 25.2 percent.

While the downward direction of those numbers is unsurprising and matches other insurance surveys, it’s important to be skeptical of the details, Rachel Garfield, a senior researcher with the Kaiser Family Foundation, said.

"In terms of the very specific point estimates, that's a little more tricky," Garfield said. "The smaller the population, the harder it is to sample people from that population, so if you're talking about a specific group of people, you have to be a little more weary of the numbers."

Still, Garfield said the poll suggests the health care law is working as intended.

The question then becomes not whether the Affordable Care Act is signing people up, but whether its success is a good thing.

A separate poll released by Pew, also on Monday, found that despite the apparent efficacy, Americans are more dissatisfied with the law than ever. The Pew survey showed 55 percent of Americans disapprove of the law, a full 10 percentage points higher than when the law first passed in 2010.

Disapproval fell along predictably partisan lines, with 80 percent of Republicans saying they did not favor the law, most because they saw it as an unnecessary government intrusion into private enterprise.

But the law has also drawn a lot of flack from liberals who say it doesn’t go far enough in attempting to insure most Americans. The new Gallup numbers are unlikely to change that critique either.

"I think the [Gallup poll] shows that the Affordable Care Act is moving us in the right direction," said Heather McCabe, a professor of social work focusing on health care issues at Indiana University. But mending the U.S. health care system, she said, "is not going to be a short-term fix."