It marked the third straight year in which the Census Bureau recorded a drop in the share of Americans without health care coverage. Census: Uninsured rate dropped to 8.8 percent last year

The number of Americans lacking health insurance coverage continued to drop during the final year of the Obama administration, further complicating Republican efforts to dismantle Obamacare.

The uninsured rate fell to 8.8 percent last year, a 0.3 percentage point decrease from 2015, the U.S. Census Bureau reported Tuesday.


A total of 29 million Americans were uninsured all of last year, a drop of 900,000 from 2015.

It marked the third straight year in which the Census Bureau recorded a drop in the share of Americans without health care coverage. Prior to full implementation of the Affordable Care Act, the uninsured rate stood at 13.3 percent.

But there are indications that the uninsured population has begun to swell in recent months amid uncertainty about the future of Obamacare. The latest Gallup survey found that 11.7 percent of adults lacked health insurance, a 0.8 point increase since last year.

In addition, a survey by the Commonwealth Fund found significant upticks in the uninsured rate among certain demographic groups, including adults ages 35 through 49 and individuals with incomes at or above 400 percent of the federal poverty level.

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Republicans have so far failed to follow through on promises to repeal and replace Obamacare and face a narrow window to take action before the end of the month.

The Trump administration has offered mixed signals about how it will implement the law. The Department of Health and Human Services has enacted regulations intended to stabilize the struggling individual insurance markets. But the administration has also gutted enrollment outreach efforts and suggested that it might not enforce the tax penalty on individuals who fail to obtain coverage.

The Trump administration has continually pointed to turbulence in Obamacare markets as evidence that the health care law is collapsing. Currently there are 70,000 Obamacare customers in 63 counties at risk of having no coverage options when the next open-enrollment period begins on Nov. 1, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.