Who Is Uninsured, and Why Does Health Insurance Matter?
The United States is the only industrialized nation in which everyone does not have health coverage. According to the most recent data from the U.S. Census Bureau, there were 41.2 million uninsured people in this country in 2001 (about 15 percent of the total population). But a new report prepared by Families USA for Cover the Uninsured Week (a project supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation) documents a far more astounding statistic: during the last two years, 74.7 million people under the age of 65-nearly one in three-were uninsured for some amount of time. In nine states, including three of the four most populous states in the country-California, Florida, and Texas-more than one out of three non-elderly people were uninsured during all or part of 2001-2002. In fact, two-thirds of the people who were uninsured during 2001-2002 lacked health coverage for six months or longer. Who are the uninsured? The new report, Going without Health Insurance: Nearly One in Three Non-Elderly
