How Many People Go Without Health Insurance? 
I think the real answer to your question is that no one knows for sure . Prior to the conclusion of the recent open enrollment period estimates ranged from somewhere in the 30 million to as high as 48 million Americans being uninsured . Certainly the Affordable Care Act -LRB- ObamaCare -RRB- has made some dent in this number but firm figures are difficult to obtain at this time -LRB- late April 2014 -RRB- and even the figures reported are subject to debate . If the goal of the Affordable Care Act was to eliminate Americans being uninsuredthen even the most optimistic enrollment figures of 10 million -LRB- when you include Medicaid expansion and young persons being able to stay on their parents policies until age 26 -RRB- show that we have fallen far short of eliminating the problem . And , some analysts do make the mistake of confusing enrollment with becoming insured and maintaining insurance coverage . Generally there is a 15 % to 20 % attrition rate in the individual marketplace for people who enroll but either fail to make their initial premium payment or discontinue paying -LRB- and thus their coverage -RRB- after a few months . There is little reason to think that the law will change human nature so the net impact on the number of uninsured Americans will probably be further diluted as the year progresses . When one takes into account that many enrollees being counted were previously insured under plans no longer compliant with the law 's requirements you have a fairly large amount of the enrollment really just being a transfer from one insured status to another . The end result is that there are fewer uninsured Americans today than there were a year ago but that number has not been reduced dramatically . 