Number of uninsured jumps in 2017

WASHINGTON — The number of Americans without health coverage, which declined for years after passage of the Affordable Care Act, shot up in President Donald Trump’s first year in office, according to data from a new national survey.

At the end of 2017, 12.2 percent of U.S. adults lacked health insurance, up from 10.9 percent at the end of 2016, as President Barack Obama was final term.

The increase of 1.3 percentage points, although modest, marks the first time since at least 2008 that the share of adults without insurance increased from the previous year, according to the report from Gallup, which conducts a widely followed survey asking Americans about their health coverage.

The increase indicates that 3.2 million Americans lost health coverage in 2017, completing his Gallup concluded.

The decline in coverage was most pronounced among slices of the population on which the Obama administration and its allies had focused enrollment efforts: young adults, blacks, Latinos and households making less than $36,000 a year, Gallup found.

The losses follow years of historic insurance gains driven by the health care law’s expansion of coverage, which started being fully implemented in 2014.

National survey data from the federal government and other sources suggest that more than 20 million previously uninsured Americans gained coverage from 2013 to 2017.

There is increasing evidence that these gains are improving patients’ access to medical care and relieving financial pressure, particularly on poorer households. A study of data from two states that have expanded coverage, Arkansas and Kentucky, found that low-income patients with chronic illnesses are now much more likely to seek recommended care.