Obamacare Works When The States Do Their Part

The chart above was made with information from a recent Gallup Poll. A random national sample of 178,068 adults was queried between January 2nd and December 29th of 2013. Another random national sample of 88,678 adults was questioned between January 2nd and June 30th of 2014. Because of the large sample, the margin of error is 1 to 2 points.

If there was any doubt in your mind as to whether Obamacare could actually work to reduce the number of uninsured people in the United States, the chart above should settle that. It shows ten states that have seen their number of uninsured citizens drop dramatically since Obamacare (the Affordable Care Act) was fully put into effect. This means Obamacare has been able to help millions of Americans get health insurance (which gives them access to medical care, including very important preventative care).

Meanwhile, many other states saw very little reduction in their number of uninsured citizens. A prime example is Texas -- which had 27% of its population uninsured before the establishment of Obamacare (about 7,051,939 people). Only a few hundred thousand were able to get coverage through the federal insurance exchange, which was a drop in the bucket compared to the state's uninsured population. That means Texas still has more than a quarter of its population without any kind of health insurance.

Why the big difference between the states in the chart above (which had a huge drop in the number of uninsured) and the states like Texas (who did not see much drop in the number of uninsured)? The main reason is the degree of cooperation of the state governments.

The states that saw a big drop in uninsured citizens were the states that created a state insurance exchange, expanded Medicaid to cover more of their poor citizens, and encouraged all citizens to get insurance coverage. The states with only a tiny drop in the number of uninsured citizens were those who refused to create their own state insurance exchange, refused to expand Medicaid, and tried to discourage people from signing up for health insurance (telling them they couldn't afford it and it would be bad for them). The latter states were those controlled by the Republicans.

Obamacare does work in reducing significantly the number of uninsured citizens -- but it's not magic. It works best when states cooperate and do their part., and works least when states refuse to cooperate.

Of course, Obamacare is not the complete solution to the broken medical system in the United States. It has significantly reduced the number of uninsured citizens, and probably will reduce that number even further in the future. And it has slowed the rising health care costs. But the United States still spends much more per capita for health care than other countries do, and Obamacare will never cover ALL American citizens with health insurance. It was a significant improvement, but only a partial solution to U.S. health care problems.

It is now time to fix Obamacare by taking it to the next level -- turning it into a government-run, single-payer system (like Medicare) that covers all Americans and reduces health care costs. This will have to be done someday -- and sooner would be better than later.