STATCAST - Week of February 25, 2019

New Data on Long-Term Care and Health Insurance in the United States

TRANSCRIPT

With over 50 million people in the United States who are age 65 or older, long-term care continues to loom as a major issue facing Americans today. On February 26, CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics released a new publication featuring the latest data on long-term care providers and services users.

The study documents that 8.3 million people in the U.S. use regulated and paid for, long-term care services, such as home health care, hospice care, nursing homes, residential care communities and adult day care services. Across these five long-term care sectors, at least one quarter of service users in each sector had either Alzheimer’s disease or other dementias, or other chronic conditions such as arthritis, heart disease and hypertension. The data in this publication come from the latest National Study of Long-Term Care Providers.

Another topic of great importance to Americans is health insurance. On February 27, NCHS released the latest quarterly data from the National Health Interview Survey, documenting health insurance coverage for the first nine months of 2018.

An estimated 29.7 million people – or 9.2% of the U.S. population – did not have health insurance during this period. These numbers have not changed significantly over the past few years, although the numbers are significantly lower than the most recent high mark in 2010, when 48.6 million people – or 16% – did not have health insurance.

To access these publications, please visit the NCHS web site at: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs.