New Census Data Shows Decline in Job-Based Health Coverage

Sep 12th, 2009

Kentucky Youth Advocates reports that new Census Bureau estimates show that roughly one in seven Kentuckians lacked health coverage in 2007 and 2008. Read the full KYA press release here.

Some 626,000 Kentuckians, 14.8 percent of the population, were uninsured in 2007- 2008, compared with 488,500, or 12.2 percent lacking coverage at the start of the decade (2000-2001). Kentucky’s percentage of uninsured population is slightly below the national average of 15.4%.

Employer‐provided health insurance continued to decline nationwide. In 2000-2001, 68 percent of individuals in Kentucky had employer-sponsored health insurance. That share dropped to 63.9 percent in 2005-2006 and to 60.2 percent in 2007-2008.The percentage of Kentuckians with employer‐provided coverage was 60.2 percent, a decrease of 7.8 percent from 2000 and 2001. These findings will almost certainly worsen in 2009 because of the recession, and highlight the need to expand health coverage in Kentucky.

The number of uninsured individuals in Kentucky would have been even higher if public coverage had not increased from 11.4 percent of individuals in 2000-2001 to 16.9 percent in 2007-2008 – a 5.5 percent increase which likely compensated for much of the loss in employer-sponsored insurance over the same period.

The number of uninsured in Kentucky is expected to be much higher in 2009 because of accelerated job loss in the state resulting from the recession. Kentucky lost 17,900 jobs in 2008 compared to late 2007 but has already lost an additional 79,000 jobs through July of this year.

The new data were released September 10 on the Census Bureau's website and represent the only data available on state health insurance trends over time. On September 22, additional estimates will be released of state and local health insurance status from a different survey, the American Community Survey. However, that release will not provide information on health insurance trends because health insurance questions were not asked on that survey before 2008.

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