The number of people in the United States without health insurance coverage declined from 47 million (15.8 percent) in 2006 to 45.7 million (15.3 percent) in 2007, according to a report released Aug. 26 by the U.S. Census Bureau. These are among the findings contained in the report Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2007. The data were compiled from information collected in the 2008 Current Population Survey (CPS) Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC).
As Karen Davis, PhD, president of the Commonwealth Fund, points out in a statement, however, "This decline of 1.3 million uninsured people was exactly equal to the growth in coverage under Medicaid."
The survey data include, among others, the following results related to health coverage:
• The number of uninsured children declined from 8.7 million (11.7 percent) in 2006 to 8.1 million (11.0 percent) in 2007.
• Between 2006 and 2007, the uninsured rate for the native-born population declined from 13.2 percent in 2006 to 12.7 percent in 2007. Meanwhile, the percentage of the foreign-born population without insurance was statistically unchanged at 33.2 percent in 2007.
• At 11.4 percent each, the Northeast and the Midwest had lower uninsured rates in 2007 than the West (16.9 percent) and the South (18.4 percent).
Download the report.
