New Gallup survey data released this week indicates that the portion of adults in Wisconsin who are uninsured dropped by an estimated 2.1 percentage points in the first half of 2014.

The Gallup analysis of the survey data divides states into two categories: 21 states that have expanded Medicaid to adults up to 138% of the federal poverty level and also operate their own insurance Marketplace, and 29 states that haven’t done one or both of those things.  The first group of states had a drop in uninsured adults of 4.0 percentage points, while the uninsured rate among the second group, which includes Wisconsin, fell by 2.2 percentage points.

The improvement in Wisconsin is from an estimated uninsured rate among adults of 11.7% in 2013 to 9.6% for the first half of 2014.  That progress is somewhat encouraging, but this preliminary data suggest that Wisconsin still has a long way to go to achieve the Governor’s goal of cutting in half Wisconsin’s uninsured population – which I think is the least that Wisconsin should aspire to accomplish by implementing the Affordable Care Act.

As we contemplate the new survey data, it’s important to be aware of several limitations of this particular survey.  First, it was conducted from January through June of this year, so I think we can assume that the results missed part of the large increase in BadgerCare enrollment of childless adults in April and May.  By the same token, the timing of the survey probably missed a significant part of the drop in the number of parents enrolled in BadgerCare.  However, since the number of childless adults is still climbing and more than offsets the drop in parent coverage, I think it’s very likely that a survey conducted this fall will show increased progress in reducing the number of uninsured Wisconsinites.

A second caveat is that the Gallup surveys only ask about coverage of non-elderly adults.  As a result, the new survey may make Wisconsin look somewhat better relative to other states than a broader survey that also includes coverage of children.  As we noted in a blog post earlier this week, the number of children enrolled in BadgerCare has been declining this year, while Medicaid coverage of kids has been growing in most other states.

Another important consideration is the size of the survey, which was based on about 88,000 interviews over the first half of the year.  To put that in perspective, the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey (CPS) uses a survey of 100,000 households and has a high margin of error, whereas the American Community Survey (ACS) collects data from 3 million households each year.   The size of the latest Gallup survey yields reliable results for the nation as a whole and for groupings of states, but not for a state like Wisconsin.  We’ll have better results for Wisconsin after Gallup adds six more months of interviews to the current dataset.

Let’s hope that the next batch of Gallup data show much more progress in using the ACA to accomplish a large drop in the number of uninsured Wisconsinites.

Jon Peacock