More than 8% of Americans did not have health insurance during the first months of 2024, according to new survey findings published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, breaking a streak of record-low uninsured rates following the COVID-19 pandemic . An estimated 27.1 million Americans of all ages were uninsured through March, according to the quarterly figures published Tuesday.
The CDC publishes estimates on insurance coverage every three months based on results from the agency's National Health Interview Survey . The increase amounts to 3.4 million more Americans who did not have health insurance during the first quarter of this year compared to the same time in 2023 , the CDC estimates, when around 7.
7% of Americans were uninsured. Future rounds of the survey will paint a clearer picture of how high the uninsured rate will rise this year. The increases so far are not large enough to be statistically significant, said Christy Hagen of the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics.
Tuesday's figures come after years of record-low rates of uninsured Americans that Biden administration officials had touted in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, as the proportion of uninsured people fell below 8% in 2023 for four straight quarters. Experts and health officials have credited the record low uninsured rates in large part to some pandemic-era changes to health insurance. Before 2020, the nation's uninsured rate had peaked at more than 10%.
One big factor had been a .