Census Bureau Report on Health Insurance Coverage

On September 12, 2012, the U.S. Census Bureau released a report entitled “Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2011.”  According to the report, the percentage of people without health insurance in 2011 decreased to 15.7% from 16.3% in 2010. The number of uninsured people decreased to 48.6 million, down from 50.0 million in 2010. The percentage of people covered by private health insurance in 2011 was not statistically differ­ent from 2010, at 63.9 percent. This is the first time in the last 10 years that the rate of pri­vate insurance coverage has not decreased. 

Similarly, the percentage and number of people covered by employment-based health insurance in 2011 was not statistically different from 2010, at 55.1% and 170.1 million. The Northeast region had the lowest uninsured rate in 2011, at 11.0%.

In 2011, 9.4% of children under age 18 (7.0 million) were without health insurance, not sta­tistically different from the 2010 estimate. The uninsured rate for children in poverty, 13.8%, was higher than the uninsured rate for all children, 9.4%.

The report is available at http://www.census.gov/prod/2012pubs/p60-243.pdf.