Catch the Data Before It’s Gone

Editor’s Note: Download the Census Bureau’s new report on the uninsured before it disappears. 

The nation’s uninsured rate last year was 8%, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s latest annual report on health insurance coverage in the U.S. Or was it?

The agency released the report on Sept. 9. My immediate thought was how did the Census Bureau under the Trump regime rewrite the data given the regime’s penchant for disputing facts and credible statistics that contradict its lies and fabricating numbers on the fly with no way of verifying them.

Much to my surprise and delight, the new report is a mirror image of last year’s Census Bureau report on health insurance in the U.S. Similar cover image. Same format. Updated statistics for 2024. The previous year’s stats referenced in the new report didn’t change from last year’s report. No evidence that Trump’s goons punched in their own ideological and politically motivated numbers with their paws.

That’s what makes this year’s report so valuable. It’s a keepsake. It’s a memento. It’s the last of its kind before the regime rewrites history and tells you what you should believe in the future. Here’s the link to a PDF of the report before it disappears or goose steppers throw it on a fire of burning health reports.

Download it now.

Here are some overall facts from the new report:

• The number of uninsured Americans rose by 670,000 last year to about 27.1 million from about 26.4 million. That’s an increase of 2.5%. The Census Bureau considers a person to be uninsured if they didn’t have health insurance of any kind from any source for the full calendar year.
• The uninsured rate, or percentage of the U.S. population without health insurance for the entire year, was 8% last year. The uninsured rate in 2023 also was 8%. So, there was no change in the uninsured rate in 2024.

Here are some ACA- and Medicaid-specific facts from the new report:

• The number of Americans who purchased their health insurance directly from an ACA federal or state health insurance exchange rose by about 1.2 million last year to about 14.5 million in 2024 from about 13.3 million in 2023. That’s a 9.2% increase in ACA coverage.
• The number of Americans who obtained their health insurance from their state Medicaid programs dropped by about 3.3 million to about 59.4 million in 2024 from about 62.7 million in 2023. That’s a 5.2% decrease in Medicaid enrollment.

Changes in the ACA and Medicaid coverage numbers will be important to watch as provisions of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act take effect. Those provisions make it harder for people to get their health insurance through an ACA plan or from their state Medicaid program. If those people end up becoming uninsured, it should show up in the overall uninsured numbers.

That is, unless the U.S. Census Bureau, which is under the U.S. Department of Commerce and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, rewrites the annual report on health insurance coverage in the U.S. in a black Sharpie to tell us that ACA and Medicaid enrollment is up.

You know Lutnick. He’s the idiot who consistently lies when he says foreign companies pay the tariffs on imported goods and services when we all know tariffs convert to higher taxes and/or higher prices for foreign-made goods and services for consumers. We can only imagine what he’ll do with health insurance data.

To learn more about this topic, please read, “Saying Goodbye to Things in Healthcare We May Never Know Again,” on 4sighthealth.com.

One of two listed authors of this year’s report and last year’s report is Lisa N. Bunch, survey statistician in the Health and Disability Statistics Branch of the Census Bureau’s Social, Economic and Housing Statistics Division. That’s as of July 30, 2025, according to her Census Bureau bio page.

Keep her in your thoughts and prayers.

Thanks for reading.