The nation's uninsured population grew to 49.9 million people in 2010 according to US Census figures, an increase of more than 900,000 from 2009.
Despite the increase, some industry watchers seemed upbeat that the increase was not larger given the state of the economy and the sluggish economic growth of the past year.
"We didn't know exactly what to expect with this report because of the recession and slow recovery," said Devon Herrick, senior fellow with the National Center for Policy Analysis. "There was a feeling, however, that the increase would be much worse than it was."
While the increase in uninsured was not necessarily good news, the increase noted by the census was not statistically significant. However, when viewed with the other data that showed significant increases in the number of people living in poverty and a decline in household income, the uninsured numbers were a lone bright spot in an otherwise grim report.
Still, there was some hope that even a lurching economic recover would have provided the impetus to reverse the trend of people living without health insurance.
"With the economy improving, we should have seen an improvement in the uninsured rates, but we didn't see that, because the unemployment rate didn't change," said Paul Fronstin, director of health research at the Employee Benefit Research Institute.
Herrick, though, noted that when looking at historical census data in the year following the recessions in 2000-2001 and 1990-1991, the uninsured rate tended to peak about 18 months after the end of each recession, so this very slight increase is in line with what has happened in the past.
The overall trend for which sectors of the population are becoming uninsured are not encouraging in terms how they will affect the healthcare sector. "The trend shown in this report is that the growth in the uninsured is for older people – those 46 to 65 – and the poor," noted Herrick.
The only group to decrease the number of uninsured were people younger than 26 years old. Adults aged 18 to 24 who were insured increased to 72.8 percent in 2010 compared to 70.7 in 2009.
Accorinding to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, the increased is proof positive that a provision of health reform that now lets young adults stay on their parents' employer-sponsored health insurance plans until age 26 is beginning to have a positive effect.
"We expect even more will gain coverage in 2011 when the policy is fully phased in," said Sebelius in a post on healthcare.gov in response to the census findings.
On a state-by-state basis, Texas and New Mexico showed the highest rates of uninsured citizens – 24.6 percent and 21.1 percent, respectively – while Massachusetts, one of only two states to require people to buy health insurance, was the lowest at just 5.6 percent of it population.