Obamacare Drives Uninsured Rate to Record Low
With the number of Americans lacking health insurance in decline, the rate of uninsured Americans has hit a record low, reaching levels not seen since the National Center for Disease Statistics began keeping records in 1972.
In the first quarter of 2015, 9.2 percent of all Americans were uninsured, according to new data from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, down from 11.5 percent in 2014. The total number of uninsured Americans fell by 7 million over the past year, from 36 million in 2014 to 29 million in the first three months of 2015.
The largest declines were seen among adults who were poor or near-poor, suggesting that the Affordable Care Act was responsible for the most significant gains in coverage. Both groups dropped from uninsured rates near 50 percent in 2010 to 28 percent among poor adults and 23.8 percent among near-poor adults in 2015.
While Democrats are citing data as evidence that the Affordable Care Act is working, Republicans will likely argue that the reduction is being driven by an improving economy and a steadily declining unemployment rate.
Arkansas and Kentucky continue to record the most noticeable reductions in uninsured rates since Obamacare took effect at the beginning of 2013, according to a new report by Gallup. Texas is the only state to still have an uninsured rate higher than 20 percent.
Number of the Day: $132,900
The cap on Social Security payroll taxes will rise to $132,900 next year, an increase of 3.5 percent. (Earnings up to that level are subject to the Social Security tax.) The increase will affect about 11.6 million workers, Politico reports. Beneficiaries are also getting a boost, with a 2.8 percent cost-of-living increase coming in 2019.
Photo of the Day: Kanye West at the White House
This is 2018: Kanye West visited President Trump at the White House Thursday and made a rambling 10-minute statement that aired on TV news networks. West’s lunch with the president was supposed to focus on clemency, crime in his hometown of Chicago and economic investment in urban areas, but his Oval Office rant veered into the bizarre. And since this is the world we live in, we’ll also point out that West apparently became “the first person to ever publicly say 'mother-f***er' in the Oval Office.”
Trump called Kanye’s monologue “pretty impressive.”
“That was bonkers,” MSNBC’s Ali Velshi said afterward.
Again, this is 2018.
Chart of the Day: GDP Growth Before and After the Tax Bill
President Trump and the rest of the GOP are celebrating the recent burst in economic growth in the wake of the tax cuts, with the president claiming that it’s unprecedented and defies what the experts were predicting just a year ago. But Rex Nutting of MarketWatch points out that elevated growth rates over a few quarters have been seen plenty of times in recent years, and the extra growth generated by the Republican tax cuts was predicted by most economists, including those at the Congressional Budget Office, whose revised projections are shown below.
Are States Ready for the Next Downturn?
The Great Recession hit state budgets hard, but nearly half are now prepared to weather the next modest downturn. Moody’s Analytics says that 23 states have enough reserves to meet budget shortfalls in a moderate economic contraction, up from just 16 last year, Bloomberg reports. Another 10 states are close. The map below shows which states are within 1 percent of their funding needs for their rainy day funds (in green) and which states are falling short.
Chart of the Day: Evolving Price of the F-35
The 2019 National Defense Authorization Act signed in August included 77 F-35 Lightning II jets for the Defense Department, but Congress decided to bump up that number in the defense spending bill finalized this week, for a total of 93 in the next fiscal year – 16 more than requested by the Pentagon. Here’s a look from Forbes at the evolving per unit cost of the stealth jet, which is expected to eventually fall to roughly $80 million when full-rate production begins in the next few years.
