About 26.7 million people in the United States, or 7.9% of the population, had no health insurance at any point in 2025, the U.S. Census Bureau reported in its annual income, poverty and health insurance release. The figure comes from the same September 15, 2026 report that found median household income hit a record $87,460 that year. Coverage moved in different directions depending on age and type, even as the overall uninsured rate held roughly steady.
Census counted 2025 coverage, not what this year’s bills look like: the same report found private coverage among people 65 and older kept slipping, the exact gap the 51 state Medicare cost-help packs in The Medicare Cost & Coverage Protection Kit are built to help close. See a state’s Medicare cost-help pack →
The Census Bureau’s 2025 Coverage Count
The Census Bureau’s 2025 income, poverty and health insurance report, released September 15, 2026, put the number of people without health insurance at 26.7 million, or 7.9% of the population, based on the Current Population Survey’s Annual Social and Economic Supplement. The bureau counts someone as insured if they had coverage for any part of the year, so the 26.7 million figure reflects people who went the entire year without any policy at all. That threshold makes the 7.9% figure a conservative measure of coverage gaps in the population, since it excludes anyone who was uninsured for a stretch of months but had a policy at some other point in 2025.
Where the Insured Get Their Coverage
Employer-sponsored coverage remained the largest single source, covering 53.5% of the population in 2025, according to the same release. Government programs covered 35.8% overall: Medicare accounted for 20.1% and Medicaid for 17.1%, while 10.5% of people bought coverage directly, either through the ACA marketplaces or outside them. Those categories overlap, since a person can hold more than one type of coverage during a year, which is part of why the shares add to more than the share of people who are insured. The Bureau reports these figures every September as part of the same release that covers income and poverty, drawing on responses collected the prior spring about coverage held at any point in the preceding calendar year.
A Coverage Shift Among People 65 and Older
The Census Bureau’s companion news-conference presentation flagged a specific change among older Americans: private coverage for people 65 and older dropped to 41.5%, a decline of 2.8 percentage points from 2024. The bureau attributed that slide to two separate drops, a 1.5-percentage-point decrease in employer-based coverage and a 1.4-point decrease in direct-purchase coverage, both among the 65-and-older group specifically. Medicare coverage among that same age group actually rose slightly, to 94.3%, up 0.6 percentage points, and Medicaid coverage among people 65 and older climbed to 18.4%, up 0.7 points, which is part of why the uninsured rate for that age group stayed low, at 1.5%, even as private coverage slipped. The pattern suggests that when an employer plan or a marketplace policy lapses after 65, Medicare and, for some, Medicaid absorb most of the difference rather than leaving the person without coverage altogether. Medicare itself, which almost everyone in that age group carries once eligible, was not the source of the decline.
Coverage Among Working-Age Adults
Adults age 19 to 64 saw a smaller shift. Public coverage among that group came in at 17.3%, with Medicaid coverage for the group down 0.6 percentage points from the year before, the presentation shows. That decline predates most of 2026’s Medicaid policy changes, including the new work-and-service requirement CMS finalized this year, since the Census figures describe calendar year 2025 in full. Working-age adults are also the group most exposed to a Marketplace or employer-coverage gap between jobs, since they are past the age where a parent’s plan typically covers them and not yet eligible for Medicare, which is part of why this age group’s public-coverage share moves more from year to year than the 65-and-older group’s does.
The Same Report’s Income and Poverty Numbers
The health insurance figures arrived inside a wider release that also found median household income climbed to $87,460 in 2025, up 2.6% from the year before and the highest figure the Bureau has recorded since it began tracking income in 1967. The official poverty rate fell to 10.2%, or 34.5 million people, with child poverty dropping to a historic low of 13.4%. None of those income and poverty gains directly explain the insurance numbers, since a household’s income and its insurance status are measured from different parts of the same survey, but the Bureau publishes them together every September.
A Snapshot That Predates This Year’s Changes
Because the survey covers all of 2025, it does not capture anything that has happened to coverage in 2026, including the roughly 315,000 unauthorized Marketplace enrollments CMS canceled this past August as part of a broader anti-fraud effort, or any change tied to Medicaid’s new work requirement, which does not take effect until 2027. Both changes could move the next uninsured count in either direction, and the Census Bureau will not report on 2026 coverage until its next annual release, which typically arrives the following September.
Coverage Gaps Census Counted Among People 65 and Older
Census’s 2025 numbers show private coverage among Americans 65 and older fell to 41.5%, down 2.8 percentage points, split between declines in employer-based and direct-purchase coverage the same year. That leaves a growing share of older adults leaning on Medicare alone to absorb costs a former employer plan or a marketplace plan used to help cover.
The Medicare Cost & Coverage Protection Kit walks through the prior-authorization appeal steps and includes a medication and cost tracker, both aimed at the same kind of out-of-pocket costs that private coverage used to soften.
Track how losing supplemental coverage changes a year’s drug costs →
This piece used AI assistance in drafting and was reviewed by a human editor prior to publication.
