The number of people with health insurance increased by 1.0 million to 243.3 million between 2002 and 2003, and the number without such coverage rose by 1.4 million to 45.0 million. The percentage of the nation’s population without coverage grew from 15.2 percent in 2002 to 15.6 percent in 2003.The number of people with health insurance coverage rose from 242.4 million in 2002 to 243.3 million in 2003. Nonetheless, the percentage with coverage dropped from 84.8 percent to 84.4 percent, mirroring a drop in the percentage of people covered by employment-based health insurance (61.3 percent in 2002 to 60.4 percent in 2003).

This decline in employment-based health insurance coverage essentially explains the drop in total private health insurance coverage, from 69.6 percent in 2002 to 68.6 percent in 2003.

The percentage of people covered by government health insurance programs rose in 2003, from 25.7 percent to 26.6 percent, largely as the result of increases in Medicaid and Medicare coverage. Medicaid coverage rose 0.7 percentage points to 12.4 percent in 2003, and Medicare coverage increased 0.2 percentage points to 13.7 percent.

The proportion of uninsured children did not change in 2003, remaining at 11.4 percent of all children, or 8.4 million.

The uninsured rate did not change for blacks (about 19.5 percent) or Asians (about 18.7 percent) between 2002 and 2003. (The health insurance coverage rates of blacks and Asians were not different in 2003.) Non-Hispanics who reported white as their only race saw their uninsured rate increase from 10.7 percent to 11.1 percent.

The uninsured rate for Hispanics, who may be of any race, was 32.7 percent in 2003 — unchanged from 2002.

Based on a three-year average (2001-2003), 27.5 percent of people who reported American Indian and Alaska native as their only race were without coverage, lower than the uninsured rate for Hispanics (32.8 percent) but higher than that of the other race groups. Comparisons of two-year moving averages (2001-2002 and 2002-2003) showed that the uninsured rate for American Indians and Alaska natives did not change.

The proportion of the foreign-born population without health insurance (34.5 percent) was about two-and-a-half times that of the native population (13.0 percent) in 2003.

The South was the only region to show an increase in its uninsured rate in 2003, up from 17.5 percent in 2002 to 18.0 percent. The health insurance coverage rates of people in the South and in the West (17.6 percent) were not different in 2003. The percentages for the Northeast and Midwest were 12.9 percent and 12.0 percent, respectively.