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• Despite the Great Recession and slow recovery, the percentage of children without health insurance coverage declined from 9.7 percent in 2008 to 7.5 percent in 2012, the most recent year of data available. 
• The decline in uninsurance was widespread across the nation, with 35 states experiencing statistically significant declines in uninsurance and no states showing an increase. State Medicaid and CHIP programs have played an increasingly important role in ensuring that children have health insurance coverage.
• Although there is substantial variation in health insurance coverage by income, disparities in coverage between low-income and higher-income children have narrowed over time. In 2008, children with family incomes at or below 138% of the poverty level were 5.3 times more likely to be uninsured than those with incomes above 400% of poverty; by 2012, this gap had narrowed to 4.5. 
• Disparities in coverage by race and ethnicity have also been reduced. In 2012, non-white children were 1.3 times more likely to be uninsured than white children, down from a gap of 1.5 in 2008. The gap between Hispanic and white children declined by an even larger amount, from an uninsurance rate that was 2.8 times higher for Hispanic children than white children in 2008 to a ratio of 2.3 in 2012.

Giovann Alarcon presented, "Establishing a Baseline for the Affordable Care Act: How accessible and affordable has health care been in Minnesota previous to the ACA?" at the Eighteenth Annual Minnesota Health Services Research Conference on Tuesday, March 4, 2014. Giovann provided an overview of two important outcomes to monitor under the ACA: health care access and affordability.

This analysis was conducted by the State Health Access Data Assistance Center (SHADAC) to estimate the geographic concentration of the uninsured across U.S. counties.  The estimates are from the 2011 Small Area Health Insurance Estimates (SAHIE) program at the U.S. Census Bureau. The SAHIE program models health insurance coverage by combining survey estimates with administrative records, population estimates, and the decennial census.  This method produces annual estimates for all counties and includes a limited set of demographic features.  The advantage of using the SAHIE is that it is the only source of annual estimates of number of uninsured for all counties. 

Full Associated Press story here.

See the interactive map here.