New Data on U.S. Health Insurance Coverage
September 11th, 2009 | Posted in Aging
by Mark Mather, associate vice president, Domestic Programs
The Census Bureau released new 2008 poverty and health insurance estimates today. Poverty rates are up (no surprise there), but it’s the health insurance numbers I was most interested in. In 2008, there were 46.3 million people in the United States without health insurance. That number is only slightly higher than it was in 2007, but it’s misleading to say so. In fact, the number of children without insurance dropped sharply, from 8.1 million to 7.3 million, while the number of working-age people (18 to 64) without insurance increased, from 36.8 million to 38.3 million.
Among the working-age population, it was the part-timers who were hit the hardest. The number of part-time workers without coverage increased by more than 1 million between 2007 and 2008, the largest increase among any major population subgroup. In 2008, more than one in four part-time workers lacked health insurance, roughly the same share as those who did not work at all last year.
An increase in the number of people covered by government insurance kept the nationwide coverage rates stable from 2007 to 2008, at around 85 percent. As reported in the New York Times, this continues an eight-year trend of declining participation in private or employer-sponsored insurance programs and increasing participation in government-run programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), and health care for the military. If we were to remove the 2008 increase in government insurance coverage, and assign those people to the “uninsured” category, then the overall health insurance coverage rate would have dropped 2 percentage points, to 83 percent.
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September 23rd, 2009 at 1:57 pm
This is very interesting information. It appears that the vast majority of the uninsured are between the ages of 18 and 65. This population has fewer serious health issues, other than maternity needs, and is better equipped to overcome a medical debt by finding work. This population would benefit from catastrophic insurance with maternity coverage, which would be less costly than general coverage plans. We sort of already do that by allowing people to reduce their taxes by excess medical expenses, but it could be made more accessible. Limiting coverage in this way would save a great deal of money. It would also discourage going in for minor colds and like ailments, simply because it is available.
My question is: What percentage of the uninsured are under 18 and over 65 years of age?
September 28th, 2009 at 12:12 pm
Hi Laura,
You raise some interesting ideas here. To answer your question, about 90 percent of kids under age 18, and 98 percent of adults 65 and older, have health insurance coverage. Among working-age folks, the group with the lowest rate of coverage is men ages 18-24 (68 percent).
November 30th, 2009 at 4:53 pm
If the reason that so many people between the ages of 18 and 65 is beccasue there are fewer medical needs what will happen to the mother that has 3 kids, no husband,wprks full time, goes to school, and no insurance if they get sick with cancer or some other serious disease? There needs to be more programs that help people in situations like these. Programs like medicaid should be extended to incorporate a larger group of people.