Though the Affordable Care Act was crafted in an effort to supply people who have never had health coverage with better access to it, a surprisingly small percentage of Americans this year are newly insured, based on recently released polling data.
As of April, only 4 percent of adult men and women with coverage never had a plan beforehand, according to survey research firm Gallup. In fact, of the newly insured, only 2 percent obtained coverage through the state or federally facilitated exchanges.
"The ACA envisioned that the new healthcare exchanges would be the main place where uninsured Americans would get their insurance this year," said Frank Newport, editor in chief at Gallup. "But it appears that a sizable segment of the newly insured Americans used another mechanism."
He added that this may be through a number of different outlets, such as employee benefits, Medicaid or private plans that are accessed outside of the government-run health marketplaces, which launched in October.
A key demographic that supporters of the health reform law have aimed to sign up are young people, or those between 18 and 29 years of age. Of the newly insured, approximately 30 percent were under 30, Gallup found. The largest segment of people with coverage for the first time was 30- to 49-year-olds, 38 percent of whom never had a health policy prior to 2014.
These numbers roughly align with what the White House reported earlier this month, when President Barack Obama announced that 8 million individuals had selected health plans thanks to the ACA. Approximately 35 percent of sign-ups were among people 35 years of age and under, based on statistics from the Congressional Budget Office.
