About 8% of Americans lacked health insurance in 2025, with the national uninsured rate holding roughly flat compared to the prior year, according to new data released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The CDC's National Health Interview Survey results offer the first complete picture of coverage for all of 2025 — the opening year of President Donald Trump's second term. The rate remains well below the all-time high of more than 18% recorded in 2010 and has stayed near the record low set in 2023, when it dipped below 9%.
Even with the overall rate holding flat, the total count of uninsured Americans climbed by approximately 800,000, a figure that includes around 300,000 children, according to The Associated Press. Analysts attribute much of that rise to an expanding U.S. population.
The steady rate may not hold. Sweeping Medicaid overhauls enacted last year carry a steep projected cost: the Congressional Budget Office estimates they could add 10 million people to the uninsured rolls over a ten-year period, according to The Associated Press. Separately, marketplace enrollment faces a significant headwind from the lapse of Affordable Care Act premium subsidies; health research nonprofit KFF forecasts that participation in those plans will drop by close to five million people between 2025 and 2026, according to The Associated Press.
On the policy front, the Trump administration has pushed initiatives aimed at making low-premium catastrophic coverage and cheaper prescription drugs available to people without insurance, according to The Associated Press. Officials have also characterized falling enrollment numbers as a sign that fraudulent or ineligible participants are being removed from the rolls, not that qualifying Americans are being shut out.
Among Hispanic Americans, the survey hinted at a potential uptick in coverage rates, though David Howard, a health policy and management professor at Emory University, cautioned that departures of uninsured individuals driven by the administration's immigration enforcement actions could be a contributing factor, he told The Associated Press.
Because the federal government runs several distinct insurance-tracking programs, estimates can diverge depending on when data is collected and how questions are framed, according to The Associated Press. Howard pointed to the U.S. Census Bureau as what many in the field regard as the primary authority on coverage data, while adding that the CDC's numbers tend to align closely with those Census findings.
Historical CDC figures trace a decades-long arc for the under-65 uninsured rate: a steady climb from 12% in 1980 peaked at roughly 18% around 2010, after which the passage of the Affordable Care Act — with its Medicaid expansions and new subsidy mechanisms — drove coverage levels higher. By the time Trump's first term ended, the rate had crept back up to between 11 and 12%, only to retreat again as pandemic-era coverage protections took hold and ultimately reach a record low below 9% in 2023.