CDC Report Finds 59M U.S. Residents Did Not Have Insurance in 2010
About 59 million U.S. residents lacked health insurance this year, an increase of four million over the previous two years, according to a CDC report released on Tuesday, Reuters reports.
For the report -- based on data from the National Health Interview Survey -- CDC from 2006 through the first quarter of 2010 interviewed nearly 90,000 U.S. residents from 35,000 households.
According to the report, 9% of U.S. adults lost health coverage during the survey period, while just 5% of those obtained coverage through public insurance programs, leaving 22% of U.S. adults ages 18 to 64 uninsured.
The survey also found:
- 59.1 million U.S. residents had no health insurance in the first three months of 2010, up from 58.7 million in 2009 and 56.4 million in 2008;
- 30.4 million had no insurance in the first quarter of 2010; and
- 27.5 million U.S. residents did not have health coverage at any point during 2008.
According to CDC Director Thomas Frieden, the survey helped federal officials "debunk two myths" about health insurance coverage -- that most of the uninsured have low incomes and that many are healthy. The survey found that half of the uninsured population have incomes above the poverty level, and one in three adults younger than age 65 with annual incomes between $44,000 and $65,000 for a family of four was uninsured at some point during the year.
In addition, the report found that more than two out of five people who lacked insurance at some point during the past year had one or more chronic diseases. For example, 15 million residents without health insurance had asthma, diabetes or high blood pressure (Fox, Reuters, 11/9).