Health insurance stats – down to basics…

In 2008, 43.8 million people of all ages(14.7%) were uninsured at the time of interview. After adjusting for age and sex, the percentage uninsured at the time of interview was 30.7% for Hispanics, 10.4% for the non-Hispanic white population, and 16.0% for the non-Hispanic black population. The percentage of people under age 65 with no health insurance coverage remained stable during 1990–2007, after increasing from 1978 to 1990.

New health insurance coverage numbers/percentages released for first quarter 2009

Today the National Center for Health Statistics released the first numbers for health insurance coverage and non-coverage for 2009 (first quarter, January through March). Below shows the percentage of the population that was uninsured last year, as well as the percentage of the population covered by a public or private plan.

For more information from this report, visit www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhis/earlyrelease/insur200909.htm.

 

 

 

Report card for Nation’s health focuses on young adults aged 18-29

Young adults in the United States aged 18-29 face a number of health challenges, including increases in obesity, high injury rates, and a lack of insurance coverage compared to other adults, according to the latest report on the nation’s health from NCHS.

• Obesity rates have tripled among young adults in the past three decades, rising from 8 percent in 1971-74 to 24 percent in 2005-06.

• In 2006, 29 percent of young men were current cigarette smokers compared to 21 percent of young adult women.  
  
• In 2005, unintentional injuries (‘‘accidents’’), homicide, and suicide accounted for 70 percent of deaths among young adults 18–29 years of age. Three-quarters of the 47,000 deaths in this age group occurred among young men. 
  
• In 2006, young adults aged 20–24 were more likely to be uninsured (34 percent) than those aged 18–19 (21 percent) and those aged 25–29 (29 percent). 

  For more visit http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/hus08.pdf.

Outpatient surgeries increase in the U.S.

The number of outpatient surgery visits in the United States increased from 1996 to 2006, from 20.8 million to 34.7 million visits. Outpatient surgery visits accounted for about one half of all surgery visits in 1996 but nearly two thirds of all surgery visits in 2006. A new report from NCHS, “Ambulatory Surgery in the United States, 2006,” contains the first data on outpatient surgery visits since 1996. The data were collected from 142 hospitals and 295 freestanding centers as part of the National Survey of Ambulatory Surgery (NSAS).

Highlights:

•Females had significantly more ambulatory surgery visits (20 million) than males (14.7 million).

•The procedures performed most often during outpatient surgery visits included endoscopies of the large intestine (5.8 million) and small intestine (3.5 million) and extraction of lens for cataract surgery (3.1 million).

•The leading diagnosis for outpatient surgery visits was cataract, with 3 million visits, followed by benign tumor (neoplasm) with 2 million visits and malignant tumor with 1.2 million visits.

     

Health insurance is related to marital status

Overall, unmarried (divorced or never married) women aged 25-64 years are more likely to be uninsured (21%) than married women (13%) in the same age group..

Poor married women are more likely to be uninsured than poor unmarried women, in part because they are less likely to have Medicaid coverage.

See more at http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db11.htm.

America’s Children: Key National Indicators of Well-Being

Last Friday we released the 10th anniversary edition of America’s Children, a product of the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics.

The Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics (Forum) is a collection of 22 Federal government agencies involved in research and activities related to children and families. The Forum was founded in 1994 and formally established in April 1997 under Executive Order No. 13045. The mission of the Forum is to foster coordination and collaboration and to enhance and improve consistency in the collection and reporting of Federal data on children and families. The Forum also aims to improve the reporting and dissemination of information on the status of children and families.

Quite a bit of media interest was generated (here | here) on the subject of teen sexual behavior but there was much more to the report. The full report is available here and our overview of the data on health indicators which we contributed to is below the fold.

New Emergency Department Report

Released today. Some of the highlights

During 2005, an estimated 115.3 million visits were made to hospital EDs, about 39.6 visits per 100 persons. This represents on average roughly 30,000 visits per ED in 2005, a 31 percent increase over 1995 (23,000). Visit rates have shown an increasing trend since 1995 for persons 22–49 years of age, 50–64 years of age, and 65 years of age and over. In 2005, about 0.5 million (0.4 percent) of visits were made by homeless individuals. Nearly 18 million patients arrived by ambulance (15.5 percent). At 1.9 percent of visits, the patient had been discharged from the hospital within the previous 7 days. Abdominal pain, chest pain, fever, and cough were the leading patient complaints, accounting for nearly one-fifth of all visits. Abdominal pain was the leading illness-related diagnosis at ED visits. There were an estimated 41.9 million injury-related visits or 14.4 visits per 100 persons.

Health Insurance Coverage

The National Center for Health Statistics has released its estimates of health insurance coverage in the United States derived from household interviews conducted under the aegis of the Health Interview Survey. The report is entitled Early Release of Health Insurance Estimates Based on Data From the 2006 National Health Interview Survey.

As an aside, the Census Bureau conducts a similar study, using a different methodology so when comparing insurance coverage over time you have to be careful to make an apples-to-apples comparison.

Top line results:

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

If you are interested in health insurance this report is a must-read.