The American adult uninsured rate rose to its highest level in four years, registering at 13.7 percent in the fourth quarter of 2018, Gallup reported on Wednesday.
The data, arrived at according to reports by Americans of their own health insurance coverage, marks its highest level since 2014’s first quarter, but is still far below the 18-percent high point recorded before Obamacare’s individual health insurance mandate was implemented in 2014.
It is also significantly above the low point of 10.9 percent achieved in 2016. Since that nadir, there has been an increase of some seven million adults without health insurance as the uninsured rate has steadily climbed since 2017.
Those reporting the greatest increase in the uninsured rate since the low point of 2016 were women, people living in households with annual incomes of less than $48,000, and adults under the age of 35, with the last group going up 4.8 percentage points in the past two years to more than 21 percent.
Among the factors cited for the steady increase in the uninsured rate over the past two years is a rise in the rates of insurance premiums in many states for some of the more popular plans.
Other factors are President Donald Trump’s hostility towards Obamacare, and his policy decisions to make the open enrollment periods half as long as they used to be and characterized with a significant reduction in public marketing.
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