The share of Americans without health insurance is dropping to the lowest levels since President Barack Obama took office, but sign-ups under his health care law lag among Hispanics, according to NBC News.
Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index said the proportion of Americans who are uninsured is on track to drop to the lowest quarterly level it measured since 2008, before President Barack Obama took office, NBC News reported.
"It's probably a reasonable hypothesis that the Affordable Care Act is having something to do with this drop," said Frank Newport, Gallup's editor-in-chief, according to NBC News. "We saw a continuation of the trend we saw last month; it didn't bounce back up."
The survey found that almost every major demographic group made progress getting health insurance except for Hispanics, NBC News reported.
With the highest uninsured rate of any racial or ethnic group, Latinos were expected to be major beneficiaries of the new healthcare law, but the administration's outreach effort to Hispanics stumbled from the start, according to NBC News.
The Spanish-language enrollment website, CuidadodeSalud.gov, was delayed due to technical problems, NBC News reported.
A spot check of the Spanish site on Monday showed parts of it still use a mix of Spanish and English to convey information on such basics as insurance co-pays, risking confusion, according to NBC News. With disappointing Latino sign-ups, the administration is making a special pitch as the end of open enrollment season approaches March 31.
Gallup found the biggest drop in the uninsured rate was among households making less than $36,000 a year, NBC News reported. Among blacks, the uninsured rate was down by 2.6 percentage points. It declined by 1 percentage point among whites, but Latinos saw a drop of just eight-tenths of a percentage point.
Gallup said the drop coincides with the start of coverage under the health care law on January 1, according to NBC News. Virtually all Americans are required to get covered or risk fines and insurers can no longer turn away people with health problems.
