27% Of U.S. Under-65 Adults Have Pre-Existing Conditions Uninsurable Before PPACA

About 27% of adults under age 65 (about 52 million people) have a pre-existing health condition that would render them uninsurable for an individual health insurance plan without the requirements of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (PPACA), according to an analysis released by the Kaiser Family Foundation. Across the states, the rate of these “declinable” pre-existing conditions varied from 22% in Colorado and Minnesota to 36% in West Virginia.

Before the PPACA coverage expansion went into effect in 2014, the authors had estimated that 18% of individual market applications were denied. They noted that . . .