Almost 50 Million Americans Have Had an Obamacare Plan Since 2014

Nearly 50 million Americans have been covered by health insurance plans through the Affordable Care Act’s marketplaces since they opened a decade ago, according to tax data analyzed by the Treasury Department and published on Tuesday.

Federal officials said that the findings represent roughly one in seven U.S. residents, a broad swath of the population that underscores the vast, and seemingly irreversible, reach of the 2010 law.

The timing of the announcement was significant, coming just hours before the presidential debate in Philadelphia, where Vice President Kamala Harris will likely use the Affordable Care Act in her pitch to voters. The law has already featured heavily in her campaign stump speeches — a signal that Ms. Harris sees the issue as critical to swing state voters.

“More Americans now have health care than at any point in our nation’s history,” Ms. Harris said in a statement, adding, “President Biden and I will continue to use every tool at our disposal to strengthen the Affordable Care Act and reject efforts to repeal this landmark law.”

Since President Biden took office, more than 18 million Americans have enrolled in marketplace plans for the first time, federal officials said. In a record, roughly 21 million people signed up for one this year, a trend that health policy experts have largely attributed to major subsidies that have lowered premiums for many Americans purchasing plans.

Those subsidies, which cost the federal government tens of billions of dollars, are set to expire next year, likely setting off intense congressional negotiations over whether to extend them.