Cool interactive demographic/geography map of who benefits from Obamacare

[Clarko95 📚💰📈]

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/10/29/upshot/obamacare-who-was-helped-most.html?abt=0002&abg=0
*Please note that these numbers are estimates, not actual observations. The Census Bureau will provide more accurate numbers next year. The data was compiled by Enroll America (group trying to get people signed up) and Civis Analytics.

State-by-state:
Biggest changes occurred in Kentucky, West Virginia, northern Michigan, Arkansas, eastern Oklahoma, southwest and western Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona, Nevada, eastern Oregon, eastern Washington state, and Alaska, and significant parts of the Dakotas, Montana, Idaho, and California.

Least affected were the northeast (especially Pennsylvania, Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey,  and Rhode Island), Wisconsin, much of Indiana, Virginia, Tennessee, Minnesota, Wyoming, northern Utah, eastern Nebraska and Kansas, and Hawai'i'is outer islands.

Demographics:
 - 10 million more people have coverage this year thanks to the ACA
 - biggest winners are people aged 18 - 34, blacks, Hispanics, and rural residents.
 - Overall uninsured rate fell from 16.4% in 2013 to 11.3% in 2014

The average uninsured rate for people in states that agreed to the Medicaid expansion fell from 14.9% to 9.2% (5.7 percentage point decrease), while the rate in states that didn't fell from 18.2% to 13.8% (4.4 percentage point decrease). 26 states + DC expanded, plus Pennsylvania which is expected next year.

By Race:
Among Hispanics, the rate fell from 26.2% to 16.5% (9.7 percentage point decrease)
Among Blacks, the rate fell from 24.1% to 16.1% (8 percentage point decrease)
Among Whites, the rate fell from 14.1% to 10% (4.1 pp decrease)
Among Asians, the rate fell from 13.6% to 9.7% (3.9 pp decrease)

By Age:
18 - 34: rate fell from 21.6% to 14.2% (7.4 pp decrease)
35 - 44: 16.4% to 11.2% (5.2 pp decrease)
45 - 54: 15% to 10.6% (4.4 pp decrease)
55 - 64: 12.7% to 9.1% (3.6 pp decrease)

By Neighborhood Income:
Poorest 20% of neighborhoods: 26.4% to 17.5% (8.9 pp decrease)
4th Quintile (21% - 40%): 21.6% to 14.3% (7.3 pp decrease)
Middle Quintile (41% - 60%): 17.6% to 11.9% (5.7 pp decrease)
2nd Quintile (61% - 80%): 13.4% to 9.4% (4 pp decrease)
Top 20%: to 6.5% (decrease)

By Gender:
Women: 15.3% to 9.8% (5.5 pp decrease)
Men: 17.7% to 13% (4.7 pp decrease)

Solid D county or Solid R county:
Solid R: 18.5% to 13.1% (5.4 pp decrease)
Solid D: 12% to 8.8% (3.2 pp decrease)

Urban and Rural:
Rural: 20% to 13.3% (6.7 pp decrease)
Small City: 19% to 12.7% (6.3 pp decrease)
Cities: 16% to 11.1% (4.9 pp decrease)

Who remains uninsured?
Despite the progress made, the county map at the very bottom shows that uninsured rates remain very high across the South (except Arkansas), in addition to Missouri, Maine, parts of Idaho, parts of Indiana, parts of Pennsylvania, southern Virginia, and modest uninsured figures show up in Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, and bits of California, Utah, and New Mexico.

[TDAS04]

State-by-state:
Biggest changes occurred in Kentucky, West Virginia, northern Michigan, Arkansas, eastern Oklahoma, southwest and western Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona, Nevada, eastern Oregon, eastern Washington state, and Alaska, and significant parts of the Dakotas, Montana, Idaho, and California.

lol, places where Obama is not very popular.  

Anyway, having Democratic governors in AR, KY, & WV appears to have helped.  The Republican governor here in South Dakota is not helpful in implementing Obamacare, and the people here are mostly ignorant about Obamacare being a good thing, but I'm glad that some help has at least gotten to the state's reservations.

[Lief 🗽]

The differences between the states that accepted and rejected the medicaid expansion are so stark.

Maps and statistics like these are why people who attack Obama from the left are jokes. No president has done as much to redistribute wealth and improve the economic standing of working class Americans since LBJ.

[KCDem]

Disgusting that those people in Appalachia are so ungrateful for their new health care coverage. Typical white privilege.

[ingemann]

Disgusting that those people in Appalachia are so ungrateful for their new health care coverage. Typical white privilege.

Congratulation for the most moronic post I have read on Atlas, usual I say this week or this month, but you have gone the extra mile and deserve to get your stupidity recognised.

So congratulation and for God's sake don't keep the work up.

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

Do Southerners simply have less of a desire for health insurance as a product than people in the North?

[memphis]

The differences between the states that accepted and rejected the medicaid expansion are so stark.

Maps and statistics like these are why people who attack Obama from the left are jokes. No president has done as much to redistribute wealth and improve the economic standing of working class Americans since LBJ.

Medicaid remains a poor person's program, even in states with the expansion. Working class people get the exchange, which with the subsidies is still a pretty good deal, but most of them (and this would be true of most middle class people too, except they receive coverage through their employer) are far too unsophisticated to understand the exchange and health insurance, and so remain tepid about the ACA.

[7,052,770]

It's heartbreakingly brutal to look at how WV, KY, and AR stand out on that map and wonder what might have been...

Remember, Mississippi had its state-based Exchange online until The Sheriff's Deputy Who Literally Converses With Jesus decided to stop supporting it just to stick it to Obama.

[politicus]

Why do so many people remain uninsured in Maine?

[morgieb]

Why do so many people remain uninsured in Maine?

The governor there is a Tea Partier.

[greenforest32]

Why do so many people remain uninsured in Maine?

The governor there is a Tea Partier.

Maine hasn't expanded Medicaid because of LePage's repeated vetos.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patient_Protection_and_Affordable_Care_Act#State_rejections_of_Medicaid_expansion

[politicus]

Why do so many people remain uninsured in Maine?

The governor there is a Tea Partier.

Maine hasn't expanded Medicaid because of LePage's repeated vetos.

Okay, thanks. It really stands out from the rest of New England.

[Bacon King]

wow the contrast between WV/KY and VA/TN is insane

[greenforest32]

wow the contrast between WV/KY and VA/TN is insane

Yeah, the uninsured are disproportionately low-income and the Medicaid expansion probably had the biggest relative effect in New Mexico, Arkansas, Kentucky, and West Virginia. It was a big deal in Oregon too.

[Starbucks Union Thug HokeyPuck]

wow the contrast between WV/KY and VA/TN is insane

Yup.  Sometimes the situation is so desperate that even anti-healthcare conservatives won't play politics with it.  Who'd a thunk?

[DrScholl]

When it gets repealed by the Republican Senate, watch Kentucky and West Virginia blame Obama for their lost benefits.

In fact, Democrats should be bipartisan and cut a deal with Republicans so anxious to repeal Obamacare. Repeal it in red states only. That is fair, bipartisan solution and those who claim the President never works with Republicans would finally have to shut their mouths.

[AggregateDemand]

The unemployment rate was 2% higher at the beginning of 2013 than it is now. ACA is doing virtually nothing. Medicaid expansion states observed a decline in uninsured that was 1% higher than non-Medicaid expansion.

Bias statisticians seek to credit ACA for suppressing costs, when the recession is the real causal factor. Statisticians seek to credit ACA for declining uninsured rate, though more people are actually working or being forced to buy health insurance.

Besides the 1% uptick caused by Medicaid expansion, ACA's only real claim to fame is that it cut many jobs from 40hrs to 29hrs, and then piled an individual mandate on all of those people who now must work 2 jobs to get by.

Unless you are in the bottom income quintile, and you have no interest in ever finding employment, this president is the biggest a-hole since Nixon.

[King]

ACA's only real claim to fame is that it cut many jobs from 40hrs to 29hrs

You think Republicans would have trotted out these totally real people who totally are now only working part time and totally exist to do TV ads where they talk about their completely 100% real situation that actually happened in this midterm.

[Lief 🗽]

The unemployment rate was 2% higher at the beginning of 2013 than it is now. ACA is doing virtually nothing. Medicaid expansion states observed a decline in uninsured that was 1% higher than non-Medicaid expansion.

Bias statisticians seek to credit ACA for suppressing costs, when the recession is the real causal factor. Statisticians seek to credit ACA for declining uninsured rate, though more people are actually working or being forced to buy health insurance.

Besides the 1% uptick caused by Medicaid expansion, ACA's only real claim to fame is that it cut many jobs from 40hrs to 29hrs, and then piled an individual mandate on all of those people who now must work 2 jobs to get by.

Unless you are in the bottom income quintile, and you have no interest in ever finding employment, this president is the biggest a-hole since Nixon.

lol, right-wingers are getting more and more deranged and divorced from reality. First the Obama recovery doesn't exist, now the non-existent recovery solely responsible for the dramatic and unprecedented increase in health insurance coverage.

[AggregateDemand]

You think Republicans would have trotted out these totally real people who totally are now only working part time and totally exist to do TV ads where they talk about their completely 100% real situation that actually happened in this midterm.

It's in the part-time employment data. Republicans don't need to trot out anyone.

This is just like the minimum wage debate. People making up all sorts of moderately-hilarious fairy-tales about why the rules of economics don't actually apply, rather than doing something that actually works.

That said, I did forget to mention the tax on "Cadillac health insurance", which is putting some downward cost on premiums by creating disincentives for companies to socialize the health insurance premiums and services of upper-management with the wage workers.

[AggregateDemand]

lol, right-wingers are getting more and more deranged and divorced from reality. First the Obama recovery doesn't exist, now the non-existent recovery solely responsible for the dramatic and unprecedented increase in health insurance coverage.

The recovery has been equal parts employment and people dropping out of the workforce. It has not been particularly robust from a socioeconomic standpoint, especially since distribution still lags behind what W achieved. Furthermore, people complain about the exorbitant $7T price tag.

If someone built you a shed, and then they tried to pass it off as a modern home, you'd be justifiably angry, not deranged. The deranged individuals are those who refuse to acknowledge that a shed is a shed.

[Foucaulf]

I'll just scribble comments:

Bias statisticians seek to credit ACA for suppressing costs, when the recession is the real causal factor.

This assertion is partially unverifiable because it assumes a counterfactual. But how does that theory apply to Medicare, a subsidized system Republicans also accuse as incentivizing price-gouging?

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How do you explain the gap in enrollment rates between counties on the KY/TN or WI/Upper Peninsula border?

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Considering that healthcare prices have been decreasing, wouldn't employees who would fall victim to this employer problem be low-productivity ones in the bottom quintile anyway? These people would have been working two jobs before the policy shift anyway, given how low American wages can be. Perhaps they already considered healthcare spending in their budget constraints.

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This is a non-sequitur. It does raise a question: in what way are you impacted by the ACA anyway?

[King]

It's in the part-time employment data. Republicans don't need to trot out anyone.

Except it's not? U6 has plummeted at the same rate. Independent tracking of underemployment like Gallup has also declined.

[AggregateDemand]

Except it's not? U6 has plummeted at the same rate. Independent tracking of underemployment like Gallup has also declined.

Employers have known the mandate is coming since 2009-2010 so the U6 rate is not going to rise upon implementation. Instead, the rate of underemployment will remain considerably higher than it was prior to the recession.

Also, we aren't really interested in U6, rather the difference between U5 and U6, which represents the underemployed. In 2006 the difference was 2.7%. In 2014, the difference is still 4.7% underemployed. Discouraged workers never reached more than 5.7% at the height of the 2009 unpleasantness.

Underemployment has been very stubborn during this protracted recovery.

[AggregateDemand]

This assertion is partially unverifiable because it assumes a counterfactual. But how does that theory apply to Medicare, a subsidized system Republicans also accuse as incentivizing price-gouging?

The recession caused retraction in the enrollment rate growth for Medicare Advantage, Medicare Part D, and other services. ACA cuts Medicare Advantage, but not until next year. The Bush administration would tell you that Part D functions like a market regardless of enrollment rates, but those claims are a bit dubious.

Local variance between states with/without Medicaid expansion are not really indicative of what ACA does for our nation. Likewise, many of those in the 29-hr two-job demographic will be in states without Medicaid expansion. Others may be in states and localities where the minimum wage puts them just above the Medicaid subsidy threshold.

All of these anomalies, particularly the extraordinary effectiveness of the program in the home state of the Senate minority leader, shows haphazard planning and general laziness on the part of Congress and Obama to make sure this bill actually works for people.

As I've said before, ACA sort of randomly passes around penalties, benefits, taxes, subsidies, etc. until it's nearly impossible to figure out who wins and who loses. The macroeconomics are mostly negative or lackluster considering projected costs.