Three different documents released this week – using different data sources – shed light on the dramatic improvements in access to health insurance that have occurred under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), including continued improvements in the first half of 2015.

Here are the highlights from the new data sources, some of which include state-level figures as well as evidence of the very impressive gains nationally:

Federal insurance survey data for the first quarter of 2015 – Data released yesterday from the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) shine light on the sharp drop in the uninsured since the major parts of the ACA took effect in January of 2014:

• The number of Americans without health insurance has dropped by 15.8 million, or one-third, since 2013.
• The latest NHIS survey data, which covers the first 3 months of 2015, show that the improvement has continued this year, with a drop of 7 million uninsured people this year (relative to the 2014 average), after an improvement of 8.8 million from 2013 to 2014.

Gallup survey data for the first half of 2015 – As I explained in a WI Budget Project blog post on Tuesday, Gallup survey data shows that the percentage of adults who are uninsured has fallen sharply in 2014 and in the first half of 2015:

• Nationally, the percentage of adults lacking health insurance dropped to 11.4% in the 2^nd quarter of this year, compared to 13.4% in the second quarter of 2014 and 17.4% in the same quarter of 2013.
• Wisconsin seems to be doing even better, though the size of the survey samples means that caution should be used in working with the state-level data. The Gallup results suggest that only 5.6% of Wisconsin adults were uninsured in the first half of 2015, compared to 8.4% last year and 11.7% in 2013.

New Marketplace sign-ups after the end of the open enrollment period – CMS released a short document yesterday showing that over 940,000 people signed up for marketplace coverage by using a “special enrollment period” (SEP) between Feb. 23 of this year and the end of June.  More specifically, their figures for Wisconsin reveal:

• An additional 25,000 people signed up for a Marketplace plan during that period – on top of the 207,000 in WI who signed up during the open enrollment period that ended on Feb. 22.
• Wisconsin’s increase since Feb. 22 is the 9^th largest percentage increase among the the 37 states using HealthCare.gov.

Although some of those people had previously been insured, the substantial number of people who have used SEPs to sign up since late February could be one factor (in addition to the sign-ups during the open enrollment period) contributing to the apparent improvement in coverage in Wisconsin in the first half of this year.  (Note, however, that the new CMS figures don’t include data on how many of the people who signed up for a plan actually followed through and paid for that coverage.)

We are looking forward to much better state-level survey data in mid-September when the Census Bureau releases the latest results of the American Community Survey (which will also include sketchy data for about a third of WI counties). Unfortunately, the ACS data will just be from 2014 and won’t reflect the continued improvement in insurance coverage during the first half of this year. Nevertheless, our hopes for what the ACS data will show have been buoyed by the data released this week.

Jon Peacock