New Census Stats Show More People Moving to Government Insurance

While many people who have just gotten off the phone with an insurance agent might say that health insurance is more trouble than it's worth, the truth is that few of those people would actually give up their health insurance. With all medical costs from routine checkups to medication to treatment for personal injuries way up, it's no surprise that few people can afford to give up their health insurance.

And yet, the number of uninsured Americans has dropped, according to data reported from the latest Census Bureau statistics. From 2006 to 2007, according to the latest statistics, the number of those without health insurance dropped by 1.3 million to 45.7 million, and the percentage of uninsured Americans also dropped slightly, from 15.8 percent to 15.3 percent.

But behind those numbers, experts point to a few disturbing trends that seem to undercut the notion that the numbers of individuals without insurance dropping is good. In fact, the decreases seem to say more about the way the data is collected than about who has health care and who doesn't.

Firstly, the census data shows that the number of people receiving health insurance from their employer dropped slightly, from 59.7 to 59.3 percent. This drop is significant, because, as the numbers indicate, well more than half of Americans receive their health insurance from their employers. (For the record, 0.4% of the population is roughly 1.4 million people). Total private insurance fell at about the same percentage.

Furthermore, given the indication that the total number of uninsured Americans is also dropping, these numbers mean that more of these previously uninsured people are not getting new insurance from their employers or anywhere else in the private sector, for that matter.

So just where are the uninsured getting their insurance?

The answer to that question lies in another detail of the report: public health care provided by the government. Medicaid alone, which provides insurance for those in the lowest income bracket in the U.S., grew by 0.3 percent, or 1.3 million.

State health insurance programs-even those partially funded by the federal government, like S-CHIP-grabbed some of the movement as well, though definitive numbers are not available as they vary of course from state to state. But S-CHIP, for example, covers children, and there is good evidence that many children took advantage of the program: the number of uninsured individuals under 18 dropped to 11 percent, with around 600,000 moving from uninsured to insured.

One important detail to remember with these numbers: they do not cover the period of this year that most economists see as a significant downturn and some are even calling a full-fledged recession. Unemployment, for example, has spiked tremendously in the second and third quarters of 2008, a major factor on health insurance coverage across the country. There's no telling how far these numbers will move in next year's report.