SpatialNews Press Release

Numbers of Americans With and Without Health Insurance Rise, Census Bureau Reports

www.census.gov

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The number of people with health insurance rose by 1.2 million between 2000 and 2001, to 240.9 million, but at the same time the number of uninsured rose by 1.4 million, to 41.2 million, the Commerce Department's Census Bureau reported today.

Meanwhile, an estimated 14.6 percent of the population had no health insurance coverage during all of 2001, up from 14.2 percent in 2000.

"The percentage of people covered by employment-based health insurance dropped a point, to 62.6 percent in 2001," said Robert Mills, author of Health Insurance Coverage: 2001. "That was the principal cause of the overall decrease in health insurance coverage."

Mills said the increase in the number of people who were insured could be attributed to overall population growth.

The number (8.5 million) and proportion (11.7 percent) of uninsured children did not change significantly.

Other highlights:

The number and percentage of people covered by government health insurance programs rose significantly between 2000 and 2001. This resulted largely from an increase in the number (from 29.5 million to 31.6 million) and percentage (from 10.6 percent to 11.2 percent) of people covered by Medicaid.

Although Medicaid insured 13.3 million poor people, another 10.1 million poor people had no health insurance in 2001. They represented 30.7 percent of the poor, unchanged from 2000.

Young adults (18-to-24 years old) remained the least likely of any age group to have health insurance in 2001. Nearly 72 percent of this age group had coverage.

Based on three-year averages, American Indians and Alaska Natives were the least likely of the major racial groups to have health insurance.

Based on three-year averages, the proportion of people without health insurance ranged from around 7.2 percent in Rhode Island and Minnesota to around 23.2 percent in New Mexico and Texas. Based on two-year moving averages, the proportion of people without coverage fell in 14 states and rose in nine between 2000 and 2001.

Compared with 2000, the proportion of people who had employment-based policies in their own name fell for workers employed by firms with fewer than 25employees, but was unchanged for those employed by larger firms.

The estimates in these reports are based on the 2000, 2001 and 2002 Current Population Survey's annual demographic supplements. These health insurance coverage estimates, the first to use population estimates based on Census 2000 results, also include the results of a sample expansion of 28,000 households. The larger sample was designed to improve the reliability of national and state estimates.

Because results presented in these reports were recalculated based on the expanded sample and Census 2000 results, the new estimates could differ from previously released estimates. All statements in the reports have undergone statistical testing and all comparisons cited are statistically significant.

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