According to a report released by the U.S. Census Bureau on Wednesday, the number of Americans without health insurance decreased in 2007 for the very first time since President Bush took office. More precisely, 45.7 million of American citizens had no health insurance last year, which means 1.3 million fewer than in 2006.

"Both the percentage and number of people without health insurance decreased in 2007," said David Johnson, chief of the Census Bureau's Housing and Household Economic Statistics Division.

The enhanced situation is due mostly to health insurance programs such as Medicare and the State Children's Health Insurance Program. SCHIP is a federal government program that finances states with the aim of providing health insurance to families with children, and was created to cover uninsured kids in families with low incomes, but too high to be eligible for Medicaid.

Health care is one of the main subjects in the upcoming presidential election. Both democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and adversary John McCain have reform plans to improve the system. As shown by a report conducted by the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution, U.S. inhabitants consider that the health care strategy of Obama would cut the number of Americans without health insurance by 18 million in 2009, compared to McCain’s strategy, which is believed to reduce the number by 1 million in 2009.

The report revealed that in the state of Ohio an estimated 1.2 million people, meaning 12.4% of its population, didn’t have any kind of insurance between 2005 and 2007. The national average during the same period was about 15.4 percent, which means roughly 45.8 million people. The state of Texas had the highest rate at 24.4 percent. On the other hand, Massachusetts and Hawaii had the lowest one at 8.3 percent each, the report showed.

The number of individuals covered by government programs increased from 80.3 million in 2006 to 83 million a year later. The total number of individuals on Medicaid, a cooperative venture that provides medical coverage to eligible needy persons, increased from 38.3 million to 39.6 million. And the number of children without health insurance coverage fell to 8.1 million, this figure being lower with 600,000 than in 2006, the Census Bureau said in its report.

The findings also showed that the private health insurance coverage rate dropped to 67.5 percent of Americans in 2007, from 67.9 percent in 2006. The number of people with private coverage was steady at 202 million. The rate of employment-based insurance dropped from 59.7% to 59.3%, though the number of people covered remained at a steady level, at 177.4 million.

"As that continues to erode, one worries we are headed for even lower numbers," stated health care economist Karen Davis, president of The Commonwealth Fund, a private, charitable foundation designed to promote a high performing health care system. "This means we need a comprehensive solution to deal with our fragmented health care delivery system and some guarantee that everyone can get coverage that is it supportable."