Insurance

Which Americans Are Least Likely To Have Health Insurance?

Health insurance acts as an aid by giving people the means to obtain necessary medical care. But a closer look at the American surroundings shows that some groups are chronically less covered by health insurance. Finding these people is not only in the public interest, but it is also a vital first step in addressing and closing the healthcare gap.

Health insurance coverage was more influenced by the place of employment than by the worker’s county of residence (metro or nonmetro). Regardless of their place of residence (metropolitan or nonmetropolitan), working-age adults who were self-employed in 2018 had a lower likelihood of having health insurance coverage than those who worked for governments or private companies. Consequently, as affordability is frequently linked to health insurance coverage, they might have had trouble getting access to medical care.

How many people are least likely to have Health Insurance

The highest percentages of uninsured individuals were seen among non-elderly American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) and Hispanic individuals, with 21.2% and 19.0%, respectively, as of 2021. The percentage of uninsured individuals who were not old and who identified as Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander (NHOPI) or Black (10.8% and 10.9%, respectively) was greater than that of White people (7.2%). Despite these recent improvements and significant previous advances in coverage under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), coverage gaps have continued over time.

Black people continued to be 1.5 times more likely to be uninsured than White people, while the uninsured rate for AIAN people increased from 2.5 to 2.9 times greater than that of White people. The uninsured rate for Hispanic people also remained over 2.5 times higher than that of White people

Compared to those employed by governments and private companies, self-employed workers are less likely to have health insurance: According to data from the USDA’s Economic Research Service (ERS), health insurance coverage rates and trends in metropolitan (metro) and nonmetropolitan (nonmetro) areas were comparable in 2018. In metro counties, 88.9% of working-age individuals (26–64) had health insurance coverage that year, while 87.5 percent of those in nonmetro counties did. Health insurance coverage was more influenced by the place of employment than by the worker’s county of residence (metro or nonmetro).

The Medicaid Expansion

There is a clear division in state decisions regarding Medicaid expansion under the ACA. There is a coverage gap in places where Medicaid has not been expanded because many low-income people make too much money to be eligible for Medicaid but not enough to buy insurance from the marketplace. In states that are not expanding, this has resulted in a sizable population lacking insurance.

Uninsured Rates by Race/Ethnicity

People of color had a far higher chance of being uninsured before the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was passed in 2010 than did White people, with Hispanic and Asian individuals having the highest risk of not having coverage (Figure 1). People of color have less access to reasonably priced health coverage choices, which is reflected in their greater rates of uninsured individuals. People of color are more likely to live in low-income families that do not have access to employer-sponsored insurance or to struggle to pay for private coverage when it is available, even though the majority of people, regardless of race or ethnicity, have at least one full-time worker in the family.

Health Insurance Coverage

The percentage of Black Americans who are not old and do not have health insurance dropped by 8 percentage points between 2011 and 2019—from 20 percent in 2011 to 12 percent in 2019—after the ACA’s coverage provisions went into effect. The Marketplace and Medicaid expansion coverage elements of the ACA were implemented between 2013 and 2016, which is when the uninsured rate among Black Americans decreased the most. The largest percentage of uninsured people in 2019 was 22 percent among non-Latino American Indians and Alaska Natives, followed by 20 percent among Latinos of all ethnicities.

In 2019, the percentage of White Americans Asian Americans, and Pacific Islanders without health insurance was between 7 and 8 percent. The experimental 2020 ACS estimate, which should be interpreted cautiously, indicates that, despite the pandemic and accompanying economic downturn, there was a very slight increase in the uninsured rate among Black Americans from 2019 to 2020 (12 percent to 13 percent).

To guarantee that people who are eligible for insurance are aware of it and can navigate the system to receive it, growing coverage necessitates not just focused promotion and instruction but also policy actions.

OTHER RELATED LINKS