Here's the latest uninsured rate among Americans under age 65:
The uninsured rate was up slightly in Q3 of last year, but still down considerably from 2021, when President Biden's subsidy expansion went into effect.
6 thoughts on “Chart of the day: The uninsurance rate in Q3 of 2023”
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This is medical insurance, right?
So despite spending much much more per capita on health care than any other country in the world the U.S. still has over 30 million people uninsured. We spend more, have more uninsured, have more bankruptcy from health care, and still have only mediocre outcomes.
What’s wrong? Maybe it’s the fact that we don’t really have a healthcare system. We actually have a revenue generating system that does healthcare. As such in our country income/revenue is more important than outcomes.
the U.S. still has over 30 million people uninsured.
No, that's not really a supportable number. Older Americans are people, too. I'm not sure why their numbers are typically pulled out in the manner CDC has done here. But if we include them (as we should) the number declines to something approaching 5% percent of the population. And then there's the unauthorized population: AFAIK no country provides comprehansive healthcare coverage to persons illegally in the country. So, the actual number of US residents uninsured is likely around 3-4%.
That's not perfect—it should be less than 1% given how much we spend on healthcare. And mere "coverage" isn't the be-all-end-all either, given that many Americans are forced to forego medicines or procedures due to onerous out of pocket costs.
But still, we have made progress, and the actual number of legtimate US residents who are uncovered at any one time is likely around 10 million at this point...
Yes it’s improved but still near 10% from 2022 census data. And yes we still pay more than we should. And yes coverage is often inadequate. And yes people lose coverage when they can’t work annymore because of illness. When they need it most. And yes COBRA is expensive and often inadequate. And when private equity companies enter the field you can bet things are unlikely to improve.
https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/demo/tables/p60/281/table1.xls
Yes it’s improved but still near 10% from 2022 census data.
If by "it" you mean the non-coverage rate for the population of the US including undocumented persons and not including over 65s (100% of the latter are effectively covered), then sure.
As I wrote in detail above, the headline "uninsured" number for the US is deeply misleading.
About 97% of legally residing US persons (all ages) are now covered by health insurance.
The link Kevin himself provides has the CDC quoting the uninsured rate for all ages as 7.4%.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhis/earlyrelease/insur202312.pdf
However, that makes no allowance for unauthorized immigrants. Assuming a conservative figure for this population (10 million), that suggests a "legal resident all ages" uninsured rate of under 5%. Assuming a less conservative figure (15 million) would indicate that rate has dropped to between 2% and 3%.
Like I wrote above, the "over 30 million/10%" figure appears to have no basis in fact, if we're talking about the entire legal population of the US, and not excluding those over 65. And needless to say, unauthorized immigrants aren't completely without coverage, either, depending on the state in question. And nearly all US hospitals are required to treat such persons on an emergency basis.