Census Bureau: 46.3 million uninsured in U.S., including 9.5 million non-citizens (keep watching for liars)

The Census Bureau has released "Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2008", and the PDF can be downloaded from here.

They report that the number of uninsured people in the U.S. is 46.3 million. That's up from 45.7 million in 2007, but the percentage of the population remained the same at 15.4%. It's very important to note that 9.5 million of that figure are not U.S. citizens; some of the 9.5 million will be visitors, some will be legal residents, and millions are illegal aliens. Unfortunately, the Census Bureau doesn't inquire about someone's immigration status so it's not known how many of that number are here illegally.

However, it's important to keep in mind that there are only around 36.8 million uninsured U.S. citizens. The very day that I suggested watching out for liars about the 2007 statistics, Obama lied about those statistics. And, he and others have repeatedly claimed that there are 47 (or so) million uninsured Americans, when that's false.

Other notes from the Census Bureau:

* Both the uninsured rate and number of uninsured children are the lowest since 1987, the first year that comparable health insurance data were collected.

* The increase in the poverty rate between 2007 and 2008 was the first statistically significant annual increase since 2004. The 2008 poverty rate (13.2 percent) was the highest since 1997.

* the poverty rate for those who were not U.S. citizens rose to 23.3 percent in 2008, up from 21.3 percent in 2007.

Thu, 09/10/2009 - 13:00 · · Importance: 4