Key Facts about the Uninsured Population
Issue Brief
The Federal Poverty Level was $ 24,526 for a family of three in 2023.
Cohen RA and Sohi IS. “Demographic Variation in Health Insurance Coverage: United States, 2023”, National Center for Health Statistics. October 2024. Available from: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/health_policy/coverage_and_access.htm.
KFF analysis of the 2023 National Health Interview Survey.
2023 Employer Health Benefits Survey (Washington, DC: KFF, October 2023), https://www.kff.org/health-costs/report/2023-employer-health-benefits-survey/.
Gary Claxton, Matthew Rae, Nisha Kurani, and Jared Ortaliza, How affordability of employer coverage varies by family income, (Health System Tracker, Peterson-KFF, March 2022), https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/brief/how-affordability-of-health-care-varies-by-income-among-people-with-employer-coverage/.
Hailun Liang, May A. Beydoun, and Shaker M. Eid, Health Needs, “Utilization of Services and Access to Care Among Medicaid and Uninsured Patients with Chronic Disease in Health Centres,” Journal of Health Services Research & Policy 24, no. 3 (Jul 2019): 172-181.
Laura Hawks, et al, “Trends in Unmet Need for Physician and Preventive Services in the United States, 1998-2017,” JAMA Internal Medicine 180, no.3 (Jan. 2020): 439-448, https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2759743 .
Megan B. Cole, Amal N. Trivedi, Brad Wright, and Kathleen Carey, “Health Insurance Coverage and Access to Care for Community Health Center Patients: Evidence Following the Affordable Care Act,” Journal of General Internal Medicine 33, no. 9 (September 2018): 1444-1446.
Veri Seo, et al., “Access to Care Among Medicaid and Uninsured Patients in Community Health Centers After the Affordable Care Act,” BMC Health Services Research 19, no. 291 (May 2019).
Marco A Castaneda and Meryem Saygili, “The health conditions and the health care consumption of the uninsured,” Health Economics Review (2016).
Steffie Woolhandler, et al., “The Relationship of Health Insurance and Mortality: Is Lack of Insurance Deadly?” Annals of Internal Medicine 167 (June 2017): 424-431.
Travis Campbell, Alison P Galvani, Gerald Friedman, Meagan C Fitzpatrick, “Exacerbation of COVID-19 mortality by the fragmented United States healthcare system: A retrospective observational study” (Lancet Reg Health Am., May 2022) https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9098098/ .
Andrea S. Christopher, et al., “Access to Care and Chronic Disease Outcomes Among Medicaid-Insured Persons Versus the Uninsured,” American Journal of Public Health 106, no. 1 (January 2016): 63-69.
Michael G. Usher, et al., “Insurance Coverage Predicts Mortality in Patients Transferred Between Hospitals: a Cross-Sectional Study,” Journal of General Internal Medicine 33, no. 12 (December 2018): 2078-2084.
Aparna Soni, Kosali Simon, John Cawley, and Lindsay Sabik, “Effect of Medicaid Expansions of 2014 on Overall and Early-Stage Cancer Diagnoses,” American Journal of Public Health epub ahead of print (December 2017), http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.2017.304166.
Jonathan Koma et al., “Medicaid Coverage Expansions and Cigarette Smoking Cessation Among Low-Income Adults,” Medical Care 55, no. 12 (December 2017): 1023-1029.
Sameed Ahmed Khantana et al., “Association of Medicaid Expansion with Cardiovascular Mortality,” JAMA Cardiology epub ahead of print (June2019), https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamacardiology/fullarticle/2734704.
Brian Lee, Jennifer Dodge, Norah Terrault, “Medicaid expansion and variability in mortality in the USA: a national, observational cohort study” (The Lancet Public Health, Volume 7, Issue 1, e48 - e55, January 2022) https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpub/article/PIIS2468-2667(21)00252-8/fulltext
Akash Pillai, Bradley Corallo, and Jennifer Tolbert, Community Health Center Patients, Financing, and Services, (Washington, DC: KFF, December 2024),
Allen Dobson, Joan DaVanzo, Randy Haught, and Phap-Hoa Luu, Comparing the Affordable Care Act’s Financial Impact on Safety-Net Hospitals in States That Expanded Medicaid and Those That Did Not, (New York, NY: The Commonweath Fund, November 2017), https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2017/nov/comparing-affordable-care-acts-financial-impact-safety-net.
Margaret B. Greenwood-Ericksen and Keith Kocher, “Trends in Emergency Department Use by Rural and Urban Populations in the United States,” JAMA Network Open, April 2019.
Jane Wishner, Patricia Solleveld, Robin Rudowitz, Julia Paradise, and Larisa Antonisse, A Look at Rural Hospital Closures and Implications for Access to Care: Three Case Studies, (Washington, DC: KFF, July 2016), https://www.kff.org/report-section/a-look-at-rural-hospital-closures-and-implications-for-access-to-care-three-case-studies-issue-brief/.
Zachary Levinson, Jamie Godwin, and Scott Hulver, Rural Hospitals Face Renewed Financial Challenges, Especially in States That Have Not Expanded Medicaid, (Washington, DC: KFF, February 2023), https://www.kff.org/health-costs/issue-brief/rural-hospitals-face-renewed-financial-challenges-especially-in-states-that-have-not-expanded-medicaid/
“Total expenditures in millions by source of payment and insurance coverage, United States, 2022,” Center for Financing, Access and Cost Trends, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, 2022, https://datatools.ahrq.gov/meps-hc.
Tim Xu, Angela Park, Ge Bai, Sarah Joo, Susan Hutfless, Ambar Mehta, Gerard Anderson, and Martin Makary, “Variation in Emergency Department vs Internal Medicine Excess Charges in the United States,” JAMA Intern Med. 177(8): 1130-1145 (June 2017), https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2629494%20.
Stacie Dusetzina, Ethan Basch, and Nancy Keating, “For Uninsured Cancer Patients, Outpatient Charges Can Be Costly, Putting Treatments out of Reach,” Health Affairs 34, no. 4 (April 2015): 584-591, http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/34/4/584.abstract.
Rebekah Davis Reed, “Costs and Benefits: Price Transparency in Health Care,” Journal of Health Care Finance (Spring 2019).
Yang Wang, Mark Katz Meiselbach, John S. Cox, Gerard F. Anderson, and Ge Bai, “The Relationships Among Cash Prices, Negotiated Rates, And Chargemaster Prices For Shoppable Hospital Services,” Health Affairs 42, no. 4, (April 2023)
Alex Montero, Audrey Kearney, Liz Hamel, and Mollyann Brodie, Data Note: American’s Challenges with Health Care Costs, (Washington, D.C.: KFF, July 2022), https://www.kff.org/health-costs/issue-brief/data-note-americans-challenges-health-care-costs/.
Lunna lopes, Audrey Kearney, Alex Montero, Liz Hamel, and Mollyann Brodie, Health Care Debt In The U.S.: The Broad Consequences Of Medical And Dental Bills, (San Francisco, CA.: KFF, June 2022), https://www.kff.org/report-section/kff-health-care-debt-survey-main-findings/
Sara R. Collins, Shreya Roy, and Relebohile Masitha, Paying for It: How Health Care Costs and Medical Debt Are Making Americans Sicker and Poorer (New York, NY: The Commonwealth Fund, October 2023), https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/surveys/2023/oct/paying-for-it-costs-debt-americans-sicker-poorer-2023-affordability-survey