While 'Obamacare' remains politically divisive, its coverage expansion helped about 20 million people get health insurance, bringing the uninsured rate to a historic low. Continued progress seems unlikely now.
Next year's premiums for plans sold on the health law's marketplaces are expected to increase significantly in many communities, and insurer participation is down sharply, with about half of US counties having only one carrier.
Although consumers who are eligible for ACA subsidies are shielded from price hikes, many who buy individual plans get no financial assistance from the government. All told, more than 17 million people purchase their own policies.
Independent experts who reviewed the Gallup-Sharecare findings said they appear to confirm other available evidence.
'The results make sense and they track with the results of other rapid surveys,' said Matthew Buettgens, a senior research analyst with the Urban Institute health policy center. 'No one is expecting this open-enrollment period to increase enrollment.'
GOP health economist Gail Wilensky said the overall direction of the Gallup-Sharecare results seems reasonable, but she will await confirmation from government surveys that take longer to produce results, but dig deeper.
'The only thing most Republicans in Congress seem to agree on is that they don't like the ACA,' she said. 'Hard to build an alternative legislative package without a sounder basis for policy and with the very narrow majority in the Senate.'
Except for seniors covered by Medicare, the Gallup-Sharecare survey found that the uninsured rate increased among all major demographic groups.
The loss of coverage was concentrated among middle-aged adults, with the uninsured rate rising by 1.8 percentage points among those 35-64 since the end of 2016. Households making less than $36,000 a year saw their uninsured rate go up by 1.7 percentage points.
Among Hispanics, the rate increased by 1.6 percentage points, and among blacks the increase was 1.5 percentage points.
The Gallup-Sharecare results are based on telephone interviews conducted July 1 to September 30, with a random sample of 45,743 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 states and Washington, D.C.
The margin of error is plus or minus one percentage point.