A new report has just been released and has showed that there continue to be fewer uninsured Americans.
The Census Bureau has now released its Health Insurance Coverage in the United States for 2015 report. It revealed that last year saw greater progress in reducing the number of people who are uninsured. This maintained a trend that was recorded the year before when there was a considerable plummet in the number of people without a health plan.
Last year, the rate of uninsured people fell to 9.1 percent after having been 10.4 percent the year before.
The overall number of people who don’t have health insurance coverage fell from having been 33 million people to a notably lower 29 million people. By the close of 2015, almost 91 percent of Americans were covered by a health plan.
The top form of coverage protecting Americans continued to be employer-based health plans. They provided 55.7 percent of the policies. In second place was Medicaid, which covered 19.6 percent of people who have health plans. Third place was a tie between direct-purchase insurance and Medicare, which each held 16.3 percent of the total. Military coverage was providing a health plan for 4.7 percent of people.
The greatest change in those health insurance coverage figures was seen in the direct-purchase plans.
In 2014, direct-purchase health insurance plans made up 14.6 percent of the policies covering Americans. However, in 2015, that figure rose to 16.3 percent. Though there was a rise in the number of people who were covered by each of those forms of health plan, it was the direct-purchase insurance plans that saw the greatest growth.
Historically, the highest coverage rates that were recorded among Americans were for those who were aged 65 and up – where 98.9 percent were covered – and those under the age of 19 years – where 94.7 percent were covered. Last year, there was an increase in coverage in every age group. The largest increase was among adults of working age, where there was a rise of 1.7 percent. This brought the total percentage of covered working aged adults to 87.4 percent.
The Census Bureau’s health insurance coverage report also underscored the fact that there was a drop in uninsured people in virtually every demographic it measures.
