Uninsured Americans

Families USA

September 20, 2007

Wrong Direction:
One Out of Three Americans Are Uninsured

According to public opinion surveys, health care is currently the top domestic concern for Americans. There are many reasons for this concern, but one of the most important is the relentless growth in the number of people without health coverage.

To find out how many people are affected by this lack of health coverage, Families USA commissioned The Lewin Group to analyze data from the Census Bureau. Current Population Survey (CPS) and the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). This analysis enabled us to determine how many people were uninsured for some portion of the 2006-2007 two-year period.

The analysis found that 89.6 million people under the age of 65 were uninsured for some or all of that two-year period. This constitutes more than one out of every three non-elderly Americans. That also represents an increase of 17 million uninsured Americans from 1999-2000 to 2006-2007.

In California, 40.5 percent of the population, 12,987,000 people, were uninsured for at least 1 month in 2006-2007.

This report provides a detailed analysis of who these uninsured Americans are, where they live, how long they have been without health coverage, and their demographic characteristics. It also shows that four out of five Americans who were uninsured during the 2006-2007 period were in working families.

Number of Months Uninsured

Of the 89.6 million uninsured individuals, more than half (50.2 percent) were uninsured for nine months or more. Nearly two-thirds (63.9 percent) were uninsured for six months or more.
Among all people under the age of 65 who were uninsured in 2006-2007, nearly one in five (18.7 percent) were uninsured for the full 24 months during 2006-2007; 19.4 percent were uninsured for 13 to 23 months; 12.1 percent were uninsured for 9 to 12 months; 13.7 percent were uninsured for 6 to 8 months; and 29.5 percent were uninsured for 3 to 5 months. Only 6.7 percent were uninsured for 2 months or less.

Key findings of study

Comments: A private insurance based "universal" healthcare system will never be truly universal because people will slip between the cracks of the insurance companies' who are only focused on their bottom line rather than insuring all are covered. The private health insurance market has the wrong incentives to provide quality, affordable healthcare for all. Only a single-payer system like SB 840 will provide continous universal healthcare to all in California.