One-fourth Of America's Non-elderly Poor Go Years Without The Protection Of Health Insurance

Main Category: Health Insurance / Medical Insurance
Also Included In: Medicare / Medicaid / SCHIP
Article Date: 12 Apr 2006 - 0:00 PDT

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According to HHS' Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, 24.2 percent of poor Americans under age 65 - 3.8 million persons - reported being continuously uninsured for at least four years when surveyed in 2003. Not being insured refers to private health insurance as well as government programs such as Medicaid.

Poor Americans, those whose income is equal to or less the poverty line, represented 12.6 percent of the U.S. population under age 65.

Alternately, high-income Americans, who made up 37.6 percent of the under 65 population, accounted for only 10 percent of those continuously uninsured from 2000 to 2003, according to AHRQ's Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS).

Nearly 4 in 10 (37.8 percent) of chronically uninsured Americans under 65 were Hispanic even though they represented just 15 percent of the nation's non-elderly population.

In contrast, non-Hispanic whites comprised 66 percent of the under 65 population but only 43.8 percent of the long-term uninsured for the entire 2000 to 2003 period.

MEPS collects information each year from a nationally representative sample of U.S. households about health care use, expenses, access, health status and quality. MEPS is a unique government survey because of the degree of detail in its data, as well as its ability to link data on health services spending and health insurance to demographic, employment, economic, health status, and other characteristics of individuals and families.

Details are in The Long-Term Uninsured in America, 200-2003: Estimates for the U.S. Population under Age 65 on AHRQ's Web site at meps.ahrq.gov/papers/st123/stat123.pdf.

http://www.ahrq.gov

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