When Is No News News? When It’s About the Uninsured.

Well, the line of demarcation is set. Now we just have to wait and see what happens.

I’m talking about the number of people without health insurance in the U.S. The uninsured. How many were there before the healthcare provisions of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBA) took effect, and how many will there be after the OBBBA provisions take effect?

The U.S. Census Bureau drew that line last week when it released its annual report on health insurance coverage in the U.S. The report’s numbers are for 2025. Cheeto Jesus signed the OBBBA into law on July 4, 2025. Provisions in the law that reduce eligibility for Affordable Care Act health plans and Medicaid start taking effect this year. When the Census Bureau releases its annual report on health insurance next year at this time, we’ll know how those provisions are affecting people’s access to health insurance. It’s pretty simple.

What makes that line in the sand hard to wash away is the fact that not much changed between 2024 and 2025. Let’s look at some of the big numbers:

• The number of people with health insurance last year was 311.2 million, up slightly from 309.9 million in 2024.
• The number of uninsured last year was 26.7 million, down slightly from 26.9 million in 2024.
• The percentage of people with health insurance last year was 92.1%, up slightly from 92.0% in 2024.
• The percentage of uninsured last year was 7.9%, down slightly from 8.0% in 2024.

Having health insurance means you had health coverage from a private or public source for all or part of the year. Being uninsured means you didn’t have health insurance for the entire year. There were slight variations in where people with insurance got their coverage last year, but not any variations significant enough to mention.

Also, the lead author of this year’s report is Lisa Bunch, a survey statistician in the Health and Disability Statistics Branch in the Census Bureau’s Social, Economic and Housing Statistics Division. I’ve never met Bunch personally. But the fact that she also was the lead author of the 2024 and 2025 reports tells me that there’s some continuity, consistency, expertise and history at the agency with these statistics.

Again, that’s the news. Not much changed at all. That’s what makes this year’s report so important. It’s now the benchmark on which we’ll forever measure the OBBBA’s impact.

Any predictions?

To learn more about this topic, please read (or listen) to:

• “Catch the Data Before It’s Gone”
• “Do We Still Care About the Uninsured?”
• “Income, Poverty, the Uninsured and Healthcare”
• “The Census Bureau’s Latest Uninsured Report Tells an Interesting Story but Only If You Care to Listen”