Health Insurance Coverage Remains At An All-Time High

This graph is from the recent Gallup Poll -- done in the second quarter of this year of a random national sample of 46,060 adults, with a margin of error of only 1 point.

It shows that the percentage of Americans without health insurance was at 11% in the second quarter of this year -- equal to the percentage in the first quarter, and an all-time low. Obamacare is not perfect, but it is obvious that it is a vast improvement over what we had before. Millions more people now have health insurance coverage.

That 11% is still too high. Hillary Clinton has promised to work to get the percentage even lower. But without the cooperation of Republican-controlled states, she cannot get it down to 0%. Those states must stop playing political games with the lives of poor Americans, and expand Medicaid to cover them.

It is to America's great shame that millions of its citizens must go without health care because they cannot afford insurance (and about 17,000 die each year because they didn't have the insurance to allow them to get medical care). No other developed nation has this problem, because they consider health care to be a right of all citizens. It is time for the United States to recognize the right to decent medical care.