According to the CDC's latest survey release, we set a record in the first quarter of 2022. Only 9.6% of Americans under 65 lacked health insurance:
This is probably due to increased Medicaid coverage and the expanded subsidies in the 2021 COVID stimulus bill. Note that 9.6% represents 26 million people.
"People without health insurance in the United States."
What is the universe? People is residents? Citizens? The US has, perhaps, 25 million undocumented: many lack insurance...
Pretty sure "US population" would at minimum include people legally residing in the US, even if they're not citizens (ie, green card and long term visa holders). To me the main question is, does it include/not include the undocumented population? If they're included in the headline insured number, it would imply the number of legal residents who lack health insurance in America is something 3-4% (the CDC number doesn't include—bizarrely IMHO—those covered by Medicare). Which is why I doubt the "universe" includes undocumented folks (I don't think the uninsured rate has been pushed quite that low).
FWIW most estimates suggest the country's undocumented immigrant population is around 12 million, not 25 million.
Here's a deeper dive into the methodology used by CDC (dated February; there's probably a more recent one lying around):
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr169.pdf
On the "undocumented issue"—I skimmed pretty rapidly, but saw no mention either way. My sense (just a guess) is they don't want to address it. But if they don't have data on this sub-population, they should at least disclose that in the interest of transparency. Such persons do constitute a nontrivial slice of the US population, after all.
Also, while I think I understand the reason for focusing on the under 65 population—seniors in America are all covered by Medicare, and so coverage verges on 100% by law—it would nonetheless be nice if they provided an aggregated picture of the entire US population. That way it would be easy to see the full impact on coverage driven by public insurance programs, the largest of which, of course, is Medicare.
But these datapoints are all findable for those with the ambition and time...
If we were to draw a Drum-esque trend line for the before ACA/Obamacare it looks to the Mk I eyeball that it would be today just about where we are.
Even the South improved, despite their leaders’ efforts to deny them medical care.