Not all bad, continued

You wouldn't know it by its recent political climate, but West Virginia is arguably the biggest beneficiary of the dreaded Obamacare around the country. 

As the Charleston Gazette-Mail's David Gutman reports, in 2013, before most of it went into effect, around 29 percent of state residents were uninsured. Today, that number is 9 percent, thanks largely to the decision by Gov. Tomblin to expand Medicaid.

According to CDC data, Gutman reports:

West Virginia’s decline in the uninsured rate, though, is more than four points greater than the next-largest decline (Kentucky saw its uninsured rate fall by almost 16 percentage points) and more than double the national decline of 7.6 percentage points. 

Nationwide, 7.4 million more people had health insurance in 2015 than in 2014, and the rate of uninsured — 9.1 percent for all people, 12.8 percent for adults — was the lowest the annual survey has ever found. 

In West Virginia, those numbers also are at record lows — a 6.1 percent uninsured rate overall, and 8.9 percent for adults. 

 Medicaid expansion now covers 175,000 low income West Virginians, which is about 55,000 more people than my most optimistic estimates a few years back. The state also has the highest percentage among the states of residents on public insurance programs.

Holy unacknowledged social democracy, Batman!

You can read the rest here.