Who has health insurance?

September 18, 2019

A breakdown of the latest data on health insurance coverage

Each year the Census Bureau issues a report on health insurance coverage in the U.S. The report includes data on the number of Americans with and without insurance by age, race, income and employment status, among other categories. Here are five takeaways from the just-released report for 2018.

Overall, insurance coverage declined slightly from 2017 to 2018

· 91.5 percent of Americans had coverage for all or part of 2018, compared with 92.1 percent in 2017

· The decrease was due largely to a 0.7 percent drop in the number of people covered by Medicaid

Most Americans rely on private insurers for their health insurance

· 218.8 million people had coverage through a private insurer in 2018, while 111.3 million were covered by a public plan

· About 55 percent of those with private insurance obtained it through their employer, with the rest either buying it directly, through a state or federal exchange, or the TRICARE program

· Among those with public coverage, 18.5 percent obtained it through Medicaid, 17.5 percent through Medicare, and 1 percent through the VA or CHAMPVA programs.

Age is a major factor in determining both the likelihood that an individual has health insurance and whether the insurance is public or private

· People 65 and over had the highest coverage rate (99.1 percent), followed by children under the age of 19 (94.5 percent) and adults age 19 to 64 (88.3 percent)

· Among those over 65 with insurance, 94.1 obtained it through a public plan (primarily Medicare). By contrast, 17.6 percent of adults age 19-64, and 35.7 percent of children under 19 had public coverage