Only 8.9% Of Americans Are Currently Uninsured

These charts are from a new survey by the National Center for Health Statistics. As the top chart shows, only 12.4% of Americans between the ages of 18 and 64 are currently without any kind of health insurance. And when you add in seniors and children and look at the population as a whole, that figure drops to only 8.9% -- the lowest figure in the history of the United States.

That means that, thanks to Obamacare, millions more Americans now have health insurance. Of course, 8.9% is still too high. There should be no American without health insurance. More needs to be done, especially among the poor.

Note charts 4 and 5. There are still 23.5% of the poor that are uninsured, and 25.9% of the near poor that are uninsured. And there are 6.5%-6.6% of children who are poor or near poor who remain uninsured. This is unacceptable. Decent medical care should be a right of all citizens -- not just those who can afford it financially.

Obamacare is not perfect, but it has been very successful in reducing the number of uninsured Americans. The reason it has not been even more successful is Republican obstruction on the state level -- where many Republican-controlled states still refuse to expand Medicaid to cover the poor. These Republican officials are responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans each year, because they are denying them the insurance that would provide them with life-saving preventative care.

The solution to improving Obamacare to cover all Americans, and to control the cost of both insurance and medical care is NOT to elect more Republicans. They promise to repeal Obamacare entirely, even though they have yet to come up with a workable system to replace it.

The solution to improving Obamacare is to elect enough Democrats to Congress to make the needed changes.