Number of people in the U.S. without health insurance 1997-2021

In 2021, around 30 million people in the United States had no health insurance. The share of Americans without health insurance saw a steady incease from 2015 to 2019 before starting to decline in 2020 to 2021. Factors like implementation of Medicaid expansion in additional states and growth in private health insurance coverage led to the decline in uninsured population, despite the economic challenges due to the pandemic in 2020.

Positive impact of Affordable Care Act

In the U.S. there are public and private forms of health insurance, as well as social welfare programs such as Medicaid and programs just for veterans such as CHAMPVA. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) was enacted in 2010, which dramatically reduced the share of uninsured Americans, though there’s still room for improvement. In spite of its success in providing more Americans with health insurance, ACA has had an almost equal number of proponents and opponents since its introduction, though the share of Americans in favor of it has risen since mid-2017 to the majority.

Persistent disparity among ethnic groups

The share of uninsured people is higher in certain demographic groups. For instance, Hispanics continue to be the ethnic group with the highest rate of uninsured people, even after ACA. Meanwhile the share of uninsured White and Asian people is lower than the national average.