WASHINGTON — The number of Arizonans without health insurance rose by about 55,000 people last year, according to new data from the Census Bureau, as a relatively strong economy was offset by hefty cost increases for coverage.
The change from 2017 to 2018 raised the total number of uninsured in the state last year to about 750,000, or 10.6% of Arizona’s population.
Similar increases were seen nationally, where an estimated 500,000 lost insurance over the year, bringing the uninsured population to more than 28.5 million, or about 8.9% of the U.S. population, the Census Bureau said.
State health officials said they have not analyzed the cause of the “concerning” rise in uninsured people in Arizona, saying they have not noticed a decline in Medicaid enrollment from one year to the next.
But experts offered a number of possible reasons, from the state’s relatively high undocumented population to the Trump administration’s attempts to dismantle Obamacare.
One possible reason is fear: An official at the nonprofit Arizona Alliance for Community Health Centers said the Trump administration’s headline-grabbing actions against illegal immigrants have likely scared away undocumented people in need of health care.
That fear could extend to migrants who are here legally themselves, said Allen Gjersvig, director of navigator and enrollment services at the alliance.
“People that have perhaps mixed family immigration status — somebody in the family is not fully documented, others are — they are afraid of being found out,” and subsequently dropping coverage, Gjersvig said.
David Hyman, a Georgetown University Law Center professor, agreed that this population can have an effect on a state’s number of uninsured.
“The states that adjoin our neighbor to the south have historically had much higher uninsurance rates than the northeast United States and the upper Midwest,” he said.
The Pew Research Center estimates about 275,000 people were undocumented in Arizona in 2016.
Some advocates found another reason to blame the Trump administration, pointing to steps it has taken to unravel the Affordable Care Act, one of the signature achievements of President Barack Obama’s administration.
“The Trump administration has done whatever they can to try to sabotage health care for Americans,” said Morgan Tucker, Arizona director of Protect Our Care.
The percentage of Americans without insurance fell from 15% in 2012, the year Obamacare took effect, to 9% in 2017, the year Trump took office, according to data from the Kaiser Family Foundation.
ACA critics complained that costs for health insurance varied widely in the early years, and they challenged the constitutionality of the “individual mandate,” which required that people get coverage or pay a fine.
