July 19, 2017

As described in a recent CEPR blog post and Dean Baker’s LA Times op-ed, “Obamacare is only ‘exploding’ in red states,” the vast majority of people with no state health insurance exchange competition live in states with Republican governors. States that have sought to make the exchanges work have largely done so, and states that have sought to make the exchanges fail have also succeeded, in many cases. The map below shows which counties have only one health insurance provider on the state exchange in 2017, color-coded by the political party of their state governor (red is Republican, blue is Democratic, and yellow is Independent). It’s worth noting that North Carolina’s Democratic governor took over in January and the state features an overwhelmingly Republican legislature. Also, while the governor of Illinois is Republican, the state has a strong Democratic majority in its legislature.