MHA Press Room

Uninsured Population Hits 46.3 Million in 2008

The number of people in the United States without health insurance rose from 45.7 million in 2007 to 46.3 million in 2008, which represents 15.4% of the overall population, the U.S. Census Bureau announced.

AHRQ reports rise in uninsured low-income workers

About one in three low-income workers lacked health insurance in 2006, up from one in four in 1996, according toa new report from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. The proportion of low-income workers covered by private health insurance fell by 10.4 percentage points over the 10-year period.

The data is from the agency’s Medical Expenditure Panel Survey.

CDC: 43.8 million Americans uninsured in 2008

An estimated 43.8 million Americans had no health insurance in 2008, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s 700,000 more people than in 2007 and 2.8 million more than in 1997.

Massachusetts had the lowest percentage of uninsured residents under age 65 (3.4%), and Texas had the highest (22.9%). An estimated 8.9% of children had no health insurance, the same as in 2007 but down from 13.9% in 1997.

CDC also released a second report on health coverage trends, which shows that the number of Americans under 65 without health insurance has increased by more than 20 million since its lowest point in 1978. The data are from the CDC’s National Health Interview Survey.

Report recommends ways to increase coverage among children

The Center for Children and Families in a May 29 report recommended expanding Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program eligibility to help cover the nearly 9 million remaining uninsured children in the U.S. The Center suggests allowing families with incomes up to 150% of the federal poverty level to enroll in Medicaid and children in families with incomes up to 300% of the FPL to enroll in CHIP, while providing flexibility for states wishing to expand eligibility further.

For ineligible families, the Center recommends establishing an insurance exchange and providing subsidies to help them afford coverage. Ensuring access to care will require major new federal resources, the Center said, suggesting that the federal government require Medicaid and CHIP reimbursement rates to be comparable to Medicare.

The Center is part of Georgetown University’s Health Policy Institute.

Study: Uninsured Americans to total 52 million in 2010

The number of uninsured Americans could reach a projected 52 million in 2010 absent any policy changes, according to study published online May 28 by Health Affairs. However, the study’s authors pointed out that the number could be even higher because their projection does not take into account the significant job losses that occur during a recession.

“Given major uncertainties about the depth and length of the recession, about federal and state policy responses, and about the effect of any public policy response, it would be foolish to attempt to offer precise forecasts of the number of uninsured Americans,” the authors said. “These caveats notwithstanding, our work demonstrates that if personal income grows as slowly as projected…and health care costs grow at the rate projected…then the number of uninsured people is likely to grow by at least 6.9 million during 2008-10.”

RWJF: Rise in uninsured underscores need for health reform

Nearly 9 million more Americans are uninsured since the nation last attempted comprehensive health care reform in 1994, according to a study released March 23 by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. “The case for reform couldn’t be clearer,” said RWJF President and CEO Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, M.D. More than 6 million of the increase was among working people.

Prepared by the State Health Access Data Assistance Center at the University of Minnesota, the study compares U.S. Census Bureau data on the uninsured from 1994-1996 with data from 2006-2007. Over the period, the percentage of non-elderly Americans with private health insurance dropped to 67% from 73%, while average employee costs for individual health insurance rose nearly eight times faster than average incomes.

The report was released in conjunction with Cover the Uninsured Week, a RWJF campaign to raise awareness about the 46 million Americans without health insurance and enroll eligible uninsured children and adults in low-cost or free health coverage programs. 

IOM urges president, Congress to solve uninsured crisis

In a report on Feb. 24, the Institute of Medicine urged the president to immediately work with Congress and other leaders to achieve health coverage for all Americans. "The evidence clearly shows that lack of health insurance is hazardous to one's health, and the situation is getting worse because of the erosion of employment-based health coverage due to the current economic crisis,” said Lawrence Lewin, chair of the committee that wrote the report.

The report assesses published studies and newly commissioned research on the impacts of lack of coverage, following a series of six similar IOM reports between 2001 and 2004 that called for the president and Congress to act by 2010 to achieve coverage for all Americans. The committee emphasized the need to begin now, given that coverage nationwide continues to decrease as more people lose their jobs and employer-based coverage.

Uninsured hospital stays climb 34% over decade

The number of uninsured hospital stays increased 34% between 1997 and 2006 to more than 2.2 million per year, according to a new report by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. The change in uninsured hospitalizations varied by region, from a 39.3% increase in the South to a nearly 20% decrease in the Midwest.

Uninsured stays were more likely than other stays to originate in the emergency department. The most common reason for admission remained childbirth, while stays for skin infections rose 167% over the period to 74,500 per year.

The data are from the agency’s 2006 Nationwide Inpatient Sample.

CBO: Uninsured could grow to 54 million by 2019

Without changes in policy, the number of uninsured Americans under age 65 could reach 54 million by 2019, Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Elmendorf told the Senate Budget Committee on Feb. 10 at a hearing on budget options for health reform. “That projection is consistent with long-standing trends in coverage and largely reflects the expectation that health care costs and health insurance premiums will continue to rise faster than people’s income – making health insurance more difficult to afford,” Elmendorf said, testifying on policy options for expanding health coverage and controlling health care costs.

Study: Many uninsured children have a parent with health coverage

An estimated 3 million children a year have no health care coverage even though at least one of their parents is insured, according to a study in the Oct. 22/29 Journal of the American Medical Association. “More than a million of these children were without coverage for the entire year,” the researchers said.

Low- and middle-income families were more likely to have an uninsured child and insured parent, as were single-parent and Hispanic households and parents with private insurance. “The working adults in these families may be able to afford private insurance for themselves but cannot afford to pay the premiums to cover their entire family,” the study suggests.

The findings are based on an analysis of 2002-2005 data from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s Medical Expenditure Panel Survey.