Summary
Health coverage plays a major role in enabling people to access health care and protecting families from high medical costs. People of color have faced longstanding disparities in health coverage that contribute to disparities in health. This brief examines trends in health coverage by race/ethnicity from 2010 through 2021 and discusses the implications for health disparities. All noted differences between groups and years described in the text are statistically significant at the p<0.05 level. It is based on KFF analysis of American Community Survey (ACS) data for the nonelderly population.
Following several years of rising uninsured rates during the Trump Administration, there were small gains in coverage across most racial/ethnic groups between 2019 and 2021. The coverage gains between 2019 and 2021 were largely driven by increases in Medicaid coverage, reflecting policies to stabilize and expand access to affordable coverage that were implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic, including a