Are There Really 46 Million Uninsured Americans?

It seems like the number of uninsured Americans always stays around 46 million. It doesn't go up by a huge percentage each year. And it seems like people always like to attack Texas and its "high uninsured population." But you rarely see a breakdown of what the uninsured population really looks like.

National Review Online did an interesting job of breaking down the 46 million uninsured Americans:

“The American health-care debate is a blizzard of numbers, but few get tossed around as frequently as “46 million.” According to the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey (CPS), that’s roughly how many people (the more precise figure was 45.7 million) lacked health insurance at a given moment in 2007 — nearly one-sixth of the entire U.S. population. ... Economist Keith Hennessey, director of the National Economic Council under Pres. George W. Bush, has examined the 2007 data and sliced the 45.7 million uninsured into several distinct clusters, basing his estimates on an earlier government analysis, conducted in 2005. Hennessey reckons that

· “6.4 million were enrolled in Medicaid or the State Children’s Health Insurance Program — now known just as the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) — but misreported their status (a phenomenon known as the “Medicaid undercount”);

· “4.3 million were eligible for Medicaid or CHIP but not enrolled;

· “9.3 million were noncitizens;

· “10.1 million belonged to families earning more than 300 percent of the federal poverty level (FPL); and

· “5 million were childless adults aged 18 to 34.

“If we eliminate those individuals from the original 45.7 million, we are left with about 10.6 million.”