Major Hispanic news outlets failed to cover a new report from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) which found that 4.2 million Hispanic Americans have gained health insurance coverage since the Affordable Care Act provisions have taken effect.

On March 16, HHS reported that 16.4 million Americans, including 4.2 million Hispanic Americans, gained health insurance coverage since “several of the Affordable Care Act's coverage provisions took effect.”

But major Hispanic media outlets have failed to cover the report. A Media Matters study found that from March 16 to March 19, top Hispanic news shows, Univision's Noticiero Univision and Noticiero Univision Edición Nocturna and Telemundo's Noticiero Telemundo made no mentions of the HHS report or the official ACA enrollment numbers disclosed this week. 

According to NBC News, Hispanics are “the group with the largest gains in insurance” because of ACA. The New York Times reported that the “proportion of Latinos who were uninsured dropped to 29.5 percent, from 41.8 percent,” far greater than the decline for white Americans from 14.3 percent to 9 percent.

Information concerning the ACA, enrollment and the law's benefits are especially important to the Hispanic community and polls have consistently found that Latinos rank health care as one of the issues most important to them. But Hispanic media outlets continue to ignore health care as an important issue, despite the fact that Latinos still lead in the share of uninsured Americans.