Health Insurance Coverage for People Under Age 65: Definitions and Estimates for 2015 to 2018
This report explains how CBO defines health insurance coverage, describes how CBO combines data from various sources to produce estimates of different types of coverage in past years, and shows such estimates for the years 2015 to 2018.
Summary
In the United States, most people under age 65 are covered by private health insurance that they or their family members obtain through their employers (referred to as employment-based, or group, coverage). A smaller number of people buy private health insurance individually (through what is known as the nongroup market). Nongroup policies are available through the health insurance marketplaces established under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) or outside of them, through brokers or directly from insurers. Two of the major sources of public insurance coverage for people under 65 are Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP).
The federal government subsidizes private and public insurance coverage through various tax preferences and federal programs. Because those subsidies affect the federal budget in many ways, defining what constitutes coverage and estimating health insurance coverage for people under 65 are important steps in the process of preparing the Congressional Budget Office’s baseline budget projections. The most recent years for which historical outcomes are available serve as the starting points for CBO’s projections of health insurance coverage. This report provides details about those starting points. Specifically, the report:
- Describes how CBO defines health insurance coverage (private and public) for people under 65 who are not institutionalized and who are not members of the active-duty military;
- Describes the individual data sources CBO uses to compile preliminary estimates of historical outcomes, and the limitations of those sources; and
- Compares preliminary estimates of historical outcomes with CBO’s integrated estimates of coverage (that are consistent with each other and that sum to accurately depict the total population) for 2015 to 2018.