A new nationwide Gallup poll finds that the number of Mainers without health insurance dropped significantly in the first year since the Affordable Care Act's insurance requirement took effect.
In 2013, 16.1 percent of Maine residents were without insurance; in 2014 that number dropped to 11.6 percent.
Emily Brostek is the executive director of the group Consumers for Affordable Health Care. She says the drop in the uninsured rate is largely due to the options available on the marketplace; and the financial help they were able to get as a result of the Affordable Care Act.
But she says those aren't the only factors.
"I think that the new penalty that people have potentially for not having insurance also played a role as well," Brostek says. "It's possible that once we dig into these numbers there may be some people who had opted out of insurance at work in the past, and 2014 was the year they said yes to it."
Brostek says Maine didn't reduce its uninsured numbers as much as some other states because Maine opted not to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act.
