Uninsured rate falls to 9 percent

By Paige Winfield Cunningham, Paige Winfield Cunningham

Published December 20, 2015

The U.S. uninsured rate fell to 9 percent during the first half of this year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a report Thursday.

In its fullest picture yet of how Obamacare has changed the insurance landscape, the CDC said 9 percent of all people in the country and 12.7 of all non-senior adults now lack health coverage, a sizable reduction from before the Affordable Care Act went into effect.

The data are based on a survey conducted from January to June with 54,097 people. During that period, 7.5 million more people had health insurance than in 2014 and 16.3 million more were insured compared to 2013.

A separate survey also released Thursday finds a large improvement in the country's uninsured rate, which for years had been dramatically higher than that of other developed countries. The share of uninsured, non-senior adults dropped from 17.6 percent in September 2013 to 10.4 percent in September 2015, according to a new analysis funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and conducted by the Urban Institute.