By Robin Foster HealthDay Reporter<\/b><\/p>\n
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TUESDAY, Aug. 6, 2024 (HealthDay News) — Following several years of record low rates of uninsured Americans, a new survey finds more people are once again without health insurance.<\/p>\n
More than 8% of Americans did not have health coverage during the first few months of 2024, according to findings<\/a> published Tuesday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.<\/p>\n An estimated 27.1 million Americans lacked health insurance through March of this year — an increase that means 3.4 million more Americans did not have coverage during the first quarter of this year compared to the\u00a0same time in 2023<\/a>, when around 7.7% of Americans were uninsured.<\/p>\n Still, the increases are not yet large enough to be considered statistically significant, Christy Hagen<\/a>, of the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, told CBS News<\/em>.<\/p>\n Experts and health officials have\u00a0credited\u00a0the record low uninsured rates of recent years to pandemic-era changes to health insurance<\/a>. Before 2020, the nation’s uninsured rate had peaked at more than 10%.<\/p>\n One big factor had been a pause in states rechecking the eligibility of residents covered by Medicaid, effectively suspending a practice that tends to purge otherwise eligible enrollees from state health insurance rolls.<\/p>\n Those eligibility checks have now returned, with Medicaid slated to finish them in almost all states\u00a0by the end of this month<\/a>.<\/p>\n The U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services estimated\u00a0in June<\/a>\u00a0that the rates of Americans not covered by health insurance were likely to worsen even further by 2026, following declines in Medicaid enrollment and the end of temporary subsidies.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the Congressional Budget Office has also\u00a0forecast<\/a>\u00a0that the U.S. uninsured rate would worsen in the coming years.<\/p>\n More information<\/strong><\/p>\n The U.S. Census Bureau has more on health insurance in America<\/a>.<\/p>\n