Efforts to get more Americans into some kind of public orprivate health insurance program slowed earlier this year, and theuninsured rates for poorchildren and the unemployed increased.

Managers of the federalgovernment's National Health InterviewSurvey program have documented the slump in health coverageexpansion in a new summary ofresults from the interviews conducted from January throughMarch.

The Affordable Care Act powered big drops in the U.S. uninsured rate in 2014and 2015, by providing cash states could use to expand theirMedicaid programs, changing major medical insurance underwritingand pricing rules, and starting the health insurance premium taxcredit subsidy program for moderate-income purchasers of commercialhealth coverage.

The overall uninsured rate for people under age 65 continued toimprove this year, but not as quickly as it has in the past fewyears.

The overall uninsured rate for people under 65 fell to 10percent, from 10.5 percent. That's the lowest uninsured rate theNational Health Interview Survey team has recorded.

The percentage of people under 65 who had private coverage,including private coverage purchased through an Affordable Care Actpublic health insurance exchange, increased to 66 percent, from65.6 percent.

But the 0.5-percentage-point drop in the overall uninsured ratefor people under 65 between 2015 and this year is much smaller thanthe 2.8-percentage-point drop between 2014 and 2015, or the3.3-percentage-point drop between 2013 and 2014.

For children, the uninsured rate actually increased, to 5percent, from 4.5 percent.

For children in homes with income from 100 percent to 200percent of the federal poverty level, theuninsured rate rose to 7.7 percent, from 6.7 percent.

For poor children, or those in homes with income below 100percent of the federal poverty level, the uninsured rate climbed to6.6 percent, from 4.4 percent.

The uninsured rate also started to move in the wrong directionfor unemployed people: Their uninsured rate increased to33.1 percent, up from 29 percent in early 2015.

That's still down sharply from an uninsured rate of 46.4 percentfor unemployed people in early 2014.

That increase may be bad news for sellers of individual healthcoverage.

The percentage of unemployed people who had government plancoverage stood at 35.8 percent earlier this year, which was aboutthe same as in early 2015. The percentage of unemployed peoplewho had private health coverage in the first quarter fell to 32.1percent, from 35.6 percent in early 2015.