In 2023, 25 million people in the United States had no health insurance. The share of Americans without health insurance saw a steady increase from 2015 to 2019 before starting to decline in 2020 to 2023. Factors like the implementation of Medicaid expansion in additional states and growth in private health insurance coverage led to the decline in uninsured population, despite the economic challenges due to the pandemic in 2020. Positive impact of Affordable Care Act In the U.S. there are public and private forms of health insurance, as well as social welfare programs such as Medicaid and programs just for veterans such as CHAMPVA. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) was enacted in 2010, which dramatically reduced the share of uninsured Americans, though there’s still room for improvement. In spite of its success in providing more Americans with health insurance, ACA has had an almost equal number of proponents and opponents since its introduction, though the share of Americans in favor of it has risen since mid-2017 to the majority. Persistent disparity among ethnic groups The share of uninsured people is higher in certain demographic groups. For instance, Hispanics continue to be the ethnic group with the highest rate of uninsured people, even after ACA. Meanwhile the share of uninsured White and Asian people is lower than the national average.

In 2023, 7.6 percent of all people in the United States didn't have health insurance. The share of Americans without health insurance saw a steady increase from 2015 to 2019 before starting to decline in 2020 to 2023. Factors like implementation of Medicaid expansion in additional states and growth in private health insurance coverage led to the decline in uninsured population, despite the economic challenges due to the pandemic in 2020. More coverage after Obamacare The groups who saw the biggest improvement in health insurance coverage after the ACA was enacted were Hispanic and Black Americans. Meanwhile, the share of White Americans without health insurance also fell due to Obamacare, but the drop in that group wasn’t as dramatic as in other ethnic groups. This is primarily due to the fact that the uninsured rate among White Americans was much lower pre-ACA than among any other group, so there was less room for improvement. ACA was especially significant for those with low income Although the ACA was signed into law in 2010, many of its major provisions didn’t come into force until 2014, which accounts for the sharp drop in Americans without health insurance in 2014. Adults with a family income lower than 200% of Federal Poverty Level (FPL) were especially impacted by the law, as the share of uninsured adults in this income group dropped 14 percent between 2013 and 2015.