Getting health insurance has become as common as wearing a seat belt

Nearly 90 percent of American adults now have health insurance — the same proportion that wear seat belts in the car.

This statistic comes from Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar's story about the newest Obamacare enrollment numbers, which show 10.2 million Americans signing up for marketplace coverage in 2015. With those newly covered Americans — alongside the millions who have also enrolled in Medicaid — having health insurance is now just about as common as buckling up.

The uninsured rate has steadily decreased under Obamacare. The latest figures show that 11.9 percent of American adults lack insurance coverage — meaning, obviously, that 88.1 percent of us have some type of plan.

(Gallup)

And this is actually slightly higher, now, than the number of Americans who say they use seat belts — although that data is a few years older. The most recent information from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration shows that in 2012, 86 percent of Americans used seat belts while driving.

(hat tip to Mike Allen)

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