The Michigan population without health insurance has dropped substantially since start of the Affordable Care Act, according to a reportthis week by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
The percentage of uninsured Michiganders fell to 7% in 2015, down from more than 10% uninsured the previous year.
Michigan did even better than the U.S. as a whole, with the national uninsured population falling to a historic low of 9.1% in 2015.
According to Marianne Udow-Phillips, director of the Center for Healthcare Research and Transformation, the report's figures indicate that the Affordable Care Act is achieving one of its important goals of reducing the number of uninsured Americans.
Udow-Phillips said one reason for Michigan's success in reducing its percentage of uninsured is "because the state took an approach of working with the Affordable Care Act and not in opposition to that law."
"We've exceeded all federal expectations for the enrollment in the exchanges," said Udow-Phillips. "So we've done well both in getting more people private coverage, and we've done well in getting more people public coverage through Medicaid."
"With the Affordable Care Act, we've done the expansion, we've added the Healthy Michigan program, and that's added almost 600,000 people to the Medicaid rolls," Udow-Phillips said.
Michigan was one of 32 states that expanded Medicaid coverage under the Affordable Care Act, according to Udow-Phillips.
