In March 2000, the Census Bureau did a survey of the American people in an effort to determine how much of our population was insured and uninsured. In September 2000, a Current Population Report on Health Insurance was released.

According to the report, the number of people without health insurance in the United States during an entire year had grown steadily from 1987 when the first such reports were released, to 1998. In 1998, the Census Bureau estimated that 44.3 million Americans, 16.3% of our population had been without health insurance for the entire year of 1998.

In 1999, for the first time in 15 years, the number of people without health insurance decreased from 44.3 million down to 42.6 million, about 15.5 percent of the U.S. population.

In 1999, a third of the population without health insurance, some 10.4 million people, were the people defined as "poor" in the United States. One-third of them were Hispanic, one-fifth were Asian and Pacific Islander, another one-fifth was black, and about eleven percent were White non-Hispanic.

About 43 percent -- 18 million -- of the uninsured population were 24 years of age or less, and about a third were foreign born. A quarter of the uninsured had a household income of less than $25,000 and a slightly larger percentage, about 26.5 percent -- about 11.3 million -- had not worked during 1999.

The state with the highest percentage of uninsured over the three years 1997, 1998, and 1999 was Texas, where 24.1 percent of the population did not have health insurance. Arizona was number two, with 23.3 percent of the population then New Mexico (23.2%) California (21.3%) Louisiana (20.3%) and Nevada (19.8%).

In 1999, 84.5 percent of the American population -- about 231.5 million people -- had health insurance. Of these, 194.6 million had private health insurance and about 66.2 million had government insurance (36.1 million - Medicare, 27.9 million Medicaid, and 8.5 million military, active and retired). About 30 million Americans with government insurance also carried supplemental private insurance.