As the shake-out of the Patient Protection and Affordable CareAct continues, it’s still hard to pinpoint how effective the reformmeasure will be in improving the health of Americans. But clearly,people continue to sign up for the coverage based on the promise ofbetter health care for all.

The National Center for Health Statistics reviewed insurancecoverage trends in 37 states from 2013 to 2015, and found thenumber of people without insurance droppedsignificantly.

According to the report, there were 16 million fewer people inthose states without insurance in 2015 than there were in 2013.Year over year, the decline was about even, with the numberdropping by 7.2 million from the 2014 total and by about 9 millionfrom 2013 to 2014.

The percent in those states without insurance stood at 9.1percent in 2015, down from 11.5 percent in 2014. Other findingsincluded:

• The percentage of uninsured adults aged 18 to 64 years decreasedfrom 16.3 percent in 2014 to 12.9 percent in 2015;

• There was a corresponding increase in private coverage, from67.3 to 70.0 percent;

• The percentage of children aged younger than 18 yearswith private coverage increased from 52.6 percent in 2013 to 55.1percent in 2015;

• The percentage of those under 65 years of age with privatecoverage through the Health Insurance Marketplace or state-basedexchanges increased from 2.5 percent in the fourth quarter of 2014to 4.2 percent in the third quarter of 2015.