Say what you will about the long-term effects of the Affordable Care Act, but its immediate results are indisputable: more Americans are covered by health insurance today than they were at this time last year.
In fact, a Gallup-Healthways Well-Being survey revealed this week that the number of uninsured Americans dropped to its lowest level in seven years in 2014, with an additional 55% of those who remain uninsured planning to get covered before they face tax penalties.
The drop in the rate of uninsured residents was most profound in states that created their own health insurance exchanges and accepted Medicaid expansion. Arkansas and Kentucky led the pack, with double-digit decreases in the uninsured population.
Other states, like Montana, saw a drop in the uninsured rate thanks to expanding industries like oil and gas. Montana’s uninsured rate dropped by 4.8 percentage points from 2013 to 2014, despite not expanding Medicaid and letting the federal government run its health insurance exchange.
The most populous states all saw declines, though Texas—whose uninsured rate dropped 2.6 percentage points—remains the state with the highest uninsured rate, at 24.4%. Massachusetts had the lowest, at 4.6%
No state experienced a statistically significant increase in the number of residents uninsured.
The numbers have meant insurance agents assisting enrollees have had a steady stream of customers through their doors, though the financial benefits of participating in the Affordable Care Act continue to be dubious.
Strict requirements in the ACA over insurers’ medical loss ratio have squeezed agent commission to low levels, “devastat[ing] the agent community,” according to Marcy Buckner of the National Association of Health Underwriters in DC.
“We’ve seen some agents who have been able to really work the new opportunities that they’ve had in the marketplace,” Buckner said. “[They’ve] continued to grow their business, and have succeeded very well, while the others have still been struggling under this cut in commissions.”
Several industry leaders have supported passage of congressional legislation that would allow insurers to remove agent compensation from the MLR calculation, but H.R. 815 is still in committee and GovTrack.US projects the bill has a dismal 1% chance of being enacted.
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