Census data shows that 7% of Illinois residents do not have health insurance

Last year, 7% of Illinois residents — about 875,000 people — lacked health insurance coverage, U.S. Census data released Thursday.

That number is up from about 6.8 percent in 2020, though the margin of error for this year was 0.2.

Nationally, 8.6% of people were uninsured last year, according to Census American Community Survey data.

Stephanie Baker, associate director of Chicago-based Health Care Justice, said the uninsured rate in Illinois may have remained relatively stable because of federal protections put in place during the pandemic. Shriver Center on Poverty Law.

At the time of the outbreak, the federal government prohibited states that received additional Medicaid funding from kicking people off Medicaid, which provides state and federal funding for low-income people. In the pre-pandemic period, Medicaid coverage had to be renewed regularly, and some people dropped out because of ineligibility and others because of administrative issues, such as not sending in paperwork.

Also, in 2021, President Joe Biden signed a bill into law that would increase and expand subsidies that offset the monthly costs of health insurance purchased through the Affordable Care Act exchange on healthcare.gov. Those revised subsidies were extended through 2025 with the signing of the Inflationary Reduction Act.

“Both of those things together are great policy choices that this administration has made to keep people with their current health coverage in Medicaid and to get more affordable health coverage in the (Affordable Care Act) marketplace,” Baker said.

But differences still exist.

The percentage of black and Latino people in Illinois without insurance was much higher than the percentage of white people without coverage. 7.9% of black Illinois residents and 15.8% of Hispanic or Latino residents were uninsured in 2021, compared to 4.3% of white residents.

“This is a legacy of systemic inequities in health insurance in Illinois and across the country,” Baker said. She also said some people don’t have the option of getting insurance through their employers.

In the year By 2021, about 59% of Illinois residents have health insurance through their employers, and about 35% have insurance through public programs like Medicare or Medicaid, according to the latest Census report.

While the number of people on Medicaid grew nationally last year, the percentage of people with private insurance, such as from their employers, declined, said Sabrina Corlett, a research professor at the Center for Health Insurance Reform at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy. . The rising cost of insurance coverage for employers has made it difficult for many to provide coverage or shift some of the growing costs to workers, such as through higher premiums, he said.

In Illinois, the percentage of uninsured people, by income, was highest among those with household incomes of $25,000 to $49,999. In Illinois, 10.8% of people in that income group were uninsured.

That may be because people in that region may not be eligible for Medicaid and don’t know they can get lower-cost coverage through the Affordable Care Act exchanges because of subsidies, Baker said. Or, even low-cost currency coverage is too expensive for them, she said.

“I talk to a lot of people who are worried. Health coverage is a constant concern for them,” Baker said. “They are doing the math and making a choice. With that, they feel like it’s a trade-off between food and gas… sometimes they don’t know about the options out there. “