MEDIA BRIEF

New CDC Report Documents Percentage of People Without Health Insurance

CDC′s National Center for Health Statistics is issuing a new report today entitled "Early Release of Health Insurance Estimates Based on Data From the 2006 National Health Interview Survey."

The study examines data collected from interviews in over 100,000 households nationwide. Some of the highlights include:

• In 2006, there were 43.6 million Americans of all ages who did not have health insurance (at the time of the interview), or 14.8 percent of the population.
• Among working-age Americans (those ages 18-64), there were 19.8 percent who did not have health insurance in 2006, a slight increase from 18.9 percent in 2005.
• Approximately 9.3 percent of children under the age of 18 did not have health insurance in 2006, a decrease from 13.9 percent in 1997.
• In 2006, the percentage uninsured at the time of interview among the 20 largest states ranged from 7.7 percent in Michigan to 23.8 percent in Texas.

The full report is available at http://www.cdc.gov/nchs.