A new policy brief from Health Affairs and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation considers how uninsurance rates are changing under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which was implemented to decrease the number of Americans lacking health insurance. Four government surveys (and a few private surveys) have been conducted to measure what is understandably the most important metric in evaluating the ACA’s effect. The brief details the challenges encountered in measuring the ACA’s success in this area.
The surveys discussed are the Current Population Survey (CPS); the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS); the American Community Survey (ACS); and the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS). Exhibit 1 shows the 2014 uninsurance rates for all four surveys; the rates range from 13.3 percent to 18.3 percent. In addition, The Commonwealth Fund and the RAND Corporation also provide uninsurance data, as do the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index and the Health Reform Monitoring Survey (HRMS) — which are explained in the brief.
Exhibit 1
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