Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2020

September 14, 2021 - Census Bureau
Report Number P60-274
Katherine Keisler-Starkey and Lisa N. Bunch

This report presents statistics on health insurance coverage in the United States based on information collected in the Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement (CPS ASEC).

Highlights

• In 2020, 8.6 percent of people, or 28.0 million, did not have health insurance at any point during the year.
• The percentage of people with health insurance coverage for all or part of 2020 was 91.4.
• In 2020, private health insurance coverage continued to be more prevalent than public coverage at 66.5 percent and 34.8 percent, respectively. Of the subtypes of health insurance coverage, employment-based insurance was the most common, covering 54.4 percent of the population for some or all of the calendar year, followed by Medicare (18.4 percent), Medicaid (17.8 percent), direct-purchase coverage (10.5 percent), TRICARE (2.8 percent), and Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) or Civilian Health and Medical Program of the Department of Veterans Affairs (CHAMPVA) coverage (0.9 percent).
• Between 2018 and 2020, the rate of private health insurance coverage decreased by 0.8 percentage points to 66.5 percent, driven by a 0.7 percentage-point decline in employment-based coverage to 54.4 percent.
• Between 2018 and 2020, the rate of public health insurance coverage increased by 0.4 percentage points to 34.8 percent.
• In 2020, 87.0 percent of full-time, year-round workers had private insurance coverage, up from 85.1 percent in 2018. In contrast, those who worked less than full-time, year-round were less likely to be covered by private insurance in 2020 than in 2018 (68.5 percent in 2018 and 66.7 percent in 2020).
• More children under the age of 19 in poverty were uninsured in 2020 than in 2018. Uninsured rates for children under the age of 19 in poverty rose 1.6 percentage points to 9.3 percent.