Connecticut Mortgage Information

New estimates of the nation's uninsured population released Tuesday show that more than 310,000 Connecticut residents ' 9 percent of the state's population ' did not have health insurance last year.

Nationwide, 45 million people, or 15 percent of U.S. residents, lacked health insurance in 2008, according to the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey.

The figures, released amid a national debate about how to provide health coverage to the uninsured, show that Connecticut has a lower rate of uninsured residents than the nation overall. But the percentage of uninsured residents in several Connecticut cities surpassed that of the state as a whole and, in some cases, the nation.

In both Bridgeport and Stamford, more than 25,000 people had no health insurance ' 20 percent of the population. Nearly 20 percent of Danbury residents and just under 15 percent of Hartford residents were uninsured.

Among children in Connecticut, 4.9 percent did not have health insurance, compared with 9.9 percent nationwide.

Much of the national health care debate has focused on whether to use a government health care program to cover more Americans. According to the census estimates, nearly a quarter of Connecticut residents received health insurance from a public program in 2008. Nationwide, just over 25 percent of residents did.

The figures released are estimates, based on a survey of about 3 million addresses. The health insurance estimates cover the nation's non-institutionalized civilian population. The data released Tuesday included figures for communities with at least 65,000 people.

This was the first time the American Community Survey included questions about health insurance. It defined the uninsured as those who had no health insurance at the time they answered the survey.

Previous census figures on health insurance have come from a separate survey that measured the uninsured differently, defining someone as uninsured only if he or she had been without health insurance for a full year. New figures from that measure, the Current Population Survey, were released earlier this month and showed that the number of people without insurance increased from 2007 to 2008, from 45.7 million to 46.3 million.