CDC Releases Report on Health Insurance Coverage

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released a report this week of health insurance coverage estimates from the first quarter of the 2017 National Health Interview Survey. The results have indicated that 8.8 percent of the population—28.1 million Americans of all ages—were uninsured between January and March 2017. Prior to the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the uninsured population was 48.6 million. The figures released this week show a 20.5 million decrease in the uninsured population since 2010 and a 0.5 million decrease since 2016.

Of those individuals uninsured for the first quarter of the year, approximately five percent were children age 17 and younger. The CDC also found that adults aged 25-34 were nearly twice as likely as adults aged 45-64 to lack health insurance coverage. For all age groups studied, the percentage of individuals who were uninsured decreased significantly between 2013 and the first quarter of 2017. The full CDC report is available here.