Census Bureau at the Commerce Department has announced that it will revise its methodology to estimate the number of people with and without health insurance. The Census Bureau administers the Current Population Survey (CPS). Research indicated that when follow-up questions were used, about 8 percent of those previously classified as not having health insurance reported that they were in fact insured. This change will occur when Census releases its estimates for 2000 in September. Had this methodology been used last year, the number of people without health insurance in 1999 would have been 39.3 million, down from the 42.6 million published in September 2000.
Prompted by findings in other household surveys, the Census Bureau added new health insurance questions in the March 2000 Supplement to the CPS to ascertain whether people who responded "no" to a series of broad, standard questions on health insurance coverage were actually uninsured. The results of the research will be released in a paper to be presented at an American Statistical Association meeting on August 7.
Confused about the different estimates of the uninsured? Click here. Or you can view the census paper at http://www.census.gov/hhes/hlthins/verif.html.
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Last updated August 3, 2001