Nearly 20 Million Have Gained Health Insurance Since 2010

The number of Americans without health insurance has fallen drastically in recent years, according to new data from the National Center for Health Statistics.

In 2016, there were 28.6 million Americans without health insurance, down from more than 48 million in 2010. Some 12.4 percent of adults aged 18 to 24 were uninsured, 69.2 percent were covered by private plans and 20 percent had public coverage.

Among children under 18, 5.1 percent were uninsured, 43 percent had public insurance and 53.8 percent had private plans.

Of those covered by private insurance in 2016, 11.6 million had purchased their plans through the federal Health Insurance Marketplace or state-based exchanges established by the Affordable Care Act.

Young people were more likely to be uninsured than their elders, the N.C.H.S. found. Almost 17 percent of adults aged 25 to 34 lacked insurance, while less than 9 percent of those aged 45 to 64 were uninsured.

The lead author of the report, Robin A. Cohen, a statistician at the N.C.H.S., pointed out that high-deductible health plans have become more popular. In 2010, 25.3 percent of the insured under the age of 65 had high-deductible plans. By 2016, nearly 40 percent had them.

From 2010 to 2016, rates of the uninsured declined in all age groups, down 14.4 percent among those aged 18 to 24, 16.5 percent among those aged 25 to 34, 13.7 percent among those aged 35 to 44, and down 8.9 percent in the 45-to-64 age group.

While rates of the uninsured declined sharply among the poor over those years, 26.2 percent of the near-poor (those with an income of 100 to 200 percent of the federal poverty level) and 23.2 percent of the poor (an income of less than 100 percent of the poverty level) lacked health insurance.

There were stark differences by race and ethnicity. While 25 percent of Hispanics were uninsured in 2016, 15 percent of African-Americans, 8.6 percent of whites and 7.5 percent of Asians lacked health insurance.

States that chose to expand Medicaid coverage to people with low incomes had the ranks of their uninsured cut in half, to 9.2 percent in 2016 from 18.4 in 2013. In states that did not expand Medicaid, the rate moved down slightly, to 17.9 percent in 2016 from 22.7 percent in 2013.

Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia and Florida were among the states with the highest percentage of uninsured residents. New York, Ohio, Michigan, Minnesota and California were among those with the lowest percentages.

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