Fewer residents in Missouri went without health insurance last year, according to a report released Tuesday by the U.S. Census Bureau.
An estimated 29,000 people gained insurance coverage in 2013 in Missouri, one of only 13 states to see a significant one-year drop in the rate of uninsured, according to the census survey.
The annual survey of states published by the Census Bureau asks people throughout the year if they currently have coverage.
Diane Rowland, the executive vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation, said the decrease in the number of the uninsured can be attributed to the economic rebound after the Great Recession as more and more Americans find jobs with health benefits.
In addition to the economy, the lower number of uninsured could be caused by more young adults staying on their parents’ health plan, according to Timothy McBride, a professor at Washington University. The Affordable Care Act allows most children to remain covered on their parents’ insurance until they turn 26.
Cora Walker, a professor at the St. Louis University School of Law, said the decline last year could also be linked to more awareness about health insurance as the federal health law and its requirement that most individuals have coverage were set to take effect.
Nationally, the census report found that 42 million people lacked health insurance during all of 2013, representing 13.4 percent of the population. Unlike the survey of states, the national survey asked if they had insurance at any point in the previous year.
Census officials also said the national numbers cannot be compared with previous years because of a new question format on the health survey.
The census data are significant because they will set the benchmark for whether the Affordable Care Act succeeded in its goal of reducing the number of Americans without health insurance.
An early indicator of that came through another federal report released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, showing that through March 2014 about 41 million, or 13.1 percent, of Americans were uninsured.
The CDC’s National Health Interview Survey included responses from 27,000 people about their insurance status. It did not contain statistics for individual states.
Expanded Medicaid eligibility and insurance coverage purchased through the online marketplace did not start until after the census results were collected but were in effect for about three months when the CDC study took place. Even so, the effect of the healthcare overhaul on the rate of uninsured won’t be known until additional data is released later this year.
The National Health Interview Survey “is understating the impact of the ACA because we know a lot of people signed up for coverage in March and individuals are coming in on Medicaid throughout the year,” Rowland said.
About 8 million people, including 150,000 in Missouri and 217,000 in Illinois, selected marketplace plans during the first enrollment period, according to federal data. An additional 4.8 million Americans have also received coverage through either Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program since the Affordable Care Act took effect.
According to the census report, 773,000 Missourians were uninsured last year compared to 801,000 two years ago — a 3.5 percent drop. Overall, 13 percent of the state’s population still did not have health insurance coverage in 2013.
This report was prepared in collaboration with Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent program of the Kaiser Family Foundation.