Last week, the Census Bureau released data showing that the number of uninsured Americans rose by 0.6 million, from 45.7 million in 2007 to 46.3 million in 2008. This increase, the result of a continuing decline in the number of individuals with employer-sponsored coverage, would have been much worse without the parallel growth in government-provided insurance, said Commonwealth Fund president Karen Davis in her invited testimony last Thursday before the U.S. House of Representative's Joint Economic Committee and a statement issued by the Fund. Public programs, Davis said, covered 4.4 million more people in 2008 than in 2007, including an additional 3 million covered by Medicaid.
