More Americans Covered by Health Insurance in 2020, CDC Says

(Bloomberg) -- U.S. health-insurance coverage improved last year, with more than 90% of Americans on a plan, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. 

The number of uninsured fell to 31.6 million, or 9.7% of the population, in 2020, according to preliminary estimates released by the CDC’s National Center of Health Statistics Tuesday. In 2019, 33.2 million, or 10.3%, were uninsured. 

The study defined people as uninsured if they didn’t have any private health insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, state, government or military plan, or weren’t on the Children’s Health Insurance Program. They were also considered uninsured if they only had a private plan that paid for one type of service, such as accidents or dental care.

Among adults aged 18-64, 13.9% were uninsured. More than two-thirds of this age cohort had private health-insurance coverage and 20.5% had public coverage.

Among children 17 years old and younger, 5.1% were uninsured.

The percentage of adults over age 65 with public insurance fell slightly to 95.9% from 96% in 2019. About 67.5% of adults aged 18–64 were likely to have private coverage in 2020, compared with 66.8% a year earlier. Just 3.8% of persons under age 65 had exchange-based coverage in 2020.

The CDC said the results still needs to undergo final data editing. In previous years, differences between preliminary and final figures were typically less than 0.1 percentage point. However, 2020 data was also subjected to changes in procedures due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

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