Health insurance is a term commonly used to describe any program that helps in the payment of medical expenses. There are a number of public and private forms of health insurance that exist in the United States, however many Americans do not have access to any form of health insurance.
While the number of uninsured people in the U.S. fell significantly since the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was signed in 2010, it has trended upwards again since 2016. Meanwhile, Hispanic and Black Americans remain the most uninsured ethnicities in the U.S. Uninsured rates also tend to be higher in groups with low-income jobs, which pay too much to qualify for public insurance and too little to afford private insurance.