Table 1.2. Number and percent of persons aged under 65 years with private health insurance and with public coverage, by age group:
United States, 1997-2001

NOTES: The category "public coverage" includes Medicaid, Medicare (disability), State-sponsored or other government-sponsored health plan, and military plan. The category "private health insurance" excludes plans that paid for only one type of service such as accidents or dental care. A small number of persons were covered by both private and public plans and are included in both categories. The analysis excluded persons with unknown health insurance status (about 1% of respondents). The data on type of coverage were cleaned and edited using an automated system based on logic checks and keyword searches. For comparability, the estimates for all years were created using these same procedures. The resulting estimates of persons having private or public coverage are generally 0.1 percentage point lower or higher than those based on manual editing procedures used for the final data files. CI is confidence interval.

DATA SOURCE: Family Core component of the 1997-2001 National Health Interview Surveys.

In 2001, of persons under 65 years old, 71.9% (95% CI = 71.2% - 72.6%) were covered by private health insurance plans, and 13.6% (95% CI = 13.1% - 14.1%) were covered by public plans.

From 1999 to 2001, the percent of persons aged under 65 years covered by private health insurance decreased from 73.1% to 71.9%, whereas the percent covered by public plans increased from 12.4% to 13.6%.

For children under 18 years old, there was an increasing trend since 1998 in the public coverage rate (20.0% in 1998 to 20.5% in 1999, 21.8% in 2000, and 23.4% in 2001). In contrast, the percent of children covered by private health insurance plans decreased from 69.1% in 1999 to 67.1% in 2001.

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This page last reviewed June 29, 2007