Uninsured rates haven't changed under Trump

The number of Americans without health insurance barely changed in 2017, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The big picture: Despite the Trump administration's best efforts to do away with the Affordable Care Act, people are still maintaining their coverage.

The numbers that matter:

• Of the nearly 80,000 people the CDC interviewed, 12.8% were uninsured at the time of the interview. That's the same as the uninsured rate in CDC's 2015 survey, and not significantly different from 2016's numbers.
• The number of people covered by the Affordable Care Act was also largely unchanged.
• More Hispanic people were uninsured in 2017 than 2016; coverage among the other racial groups remained steady.

But, but, but: A lot of the administration's most significant changes to the ACA weren't in effect in 2017. In fact, a lot of them still aren't in effect.

• We might not see the full effects of repealing the individual mandate and expanding access to skimpy, short-term insurance plans — the two biggest policy changes since Trump took office — until 2019.
• A smaller but more current tracking survey from the Commonwealth Fund recently found that the uninsured rate had ticked up early this year.