WASHINGTON — The share of Americans without health insurance is dropping to the lowest levels since President Obama took office, but signups under his health care law lag among Hispanics — a big pool of potential beneficiaries.
With just three weeks left to enroll on the new insurance exchanges, the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being index finds that 15.9 percent of US adults are uninsured thus far in 2014, down from 17.1 percent for the last three months of 2013.
Released Monday, the survey based on more than 28,000 interviews is a major independent effort to track the health care rollout. The drop of 1.2 percentage points in the uninsured rate translates to about 3 million people gaining coverage.
The survey found that almost every major demographic group made progress getting insurance, although Hispanics lagged. They were expected to be major beneficiaries of the new health care law. The administration’s outreach effort to Hispanics stumbled from the start. The Spanish-language enrollment website was delayed due to technical problems and its name fostered confusion.
The administration is making a special pitch in the next weeks to Hispanics.