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

DATA SOURCE: Family Core component of the 1997-2001 National Health Interview Surveys. The estimate for 2001 was based on data collected from January-June.

NOTES: Public coverage includes Medicaid, Medicare (disability), State-sponsored or other government-sponsored health plan, and military plan. 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% 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.

For January through June 2001, among persons under 65 years old, 72.2% (95% CI = 70.9% - 73.4%) were covered by private health insurance plans, and 13.4% (95% CI = 12.5% - 14.3%) were covered by public plans.

Children under 18 years old were more likely than adults aged 18-64 years to have public coverage (23.1% vs. 9.3%).

From 1998 through 2001, there was an increasing trend in the percent of children who had public coverage (20.0% in 1998 to 20.5% in 1999, 21.8% in 2000, and 23.1% in 2001).

The percent of children who were covered by private health insurance plans decreased from 69.1% in 1999 to 67.5% in 2000.