Michigan County Uninsured Rates in 2026: Who Lacks Health Coverage

Health insurance coverage is a direct determinant of whether residents can access preventive care, manage chronic conditions, and avoid catastrophic medical debt. Using CDC PLACES 2024 data, Michigan Signals tracks uninsured adult rates (adults aged 18–64 without health coverage) across all ten dashboard counties. The variation tells a clear story about income, employment, and Medicaid uptake across the state.

Uninsured Rates by County

• Wayne County: 8.3%
• Genesee County: 7.6%
• Macomb County: 6.8%
• Ottawa County: 6.7%
• Ingham County: 7.1%
• Kent County: 7.4%
• Kalamazoo County: 6.5%
• Washtenaw County: 5.4%
• Oakland County: 5.5%
• Livingston County: 5.1%

Wayne County's 8.3% rate represents the largest share of uninsured adults in Michigan Signals. Given the county's 1.75 million population, that translates to roughly 140,000+ uninsured adults aged 18–64. At Livingston County's 5.1%, the absolute count is far smaller given its 196,757 total population.

Michigan's Medicaid Context

Michigan expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act in 2014 (the Healthy Michigan Plan), which significantly reduced uninsured rates statewide. All the rates in the Michigan Signals dataset are substantially lower than pre-2014 levels. Even Wayne County's 8.3% is far below where it stood before expansion.

Counties with higher rates of informal employment, self-employment, and small-employer jobs tend to have more uninsured residents — workers at large employers with benefits packages tend to have coverage, while part-time and gig workers often don't.

What Uninsured Rate Affects

Higher uninsured rates correlate with delayed care, higher emergency department utilization, later-stage diagnosis of chronic diseases, and worse health outcomes overall. The relationship between Wayne County's 8.3% uninsured rate and its higher rates of obesity (37.3%) and smoking (17.2%) reflects interconnected social determinants rather than simple causation — but the co-occurrence is meaningful.

Explore the health dashboard for any county in Michigan Signals: Wayne | Oakland | Kent | Kalamazoo

Data Sources

• CDC PLACES (2024): Uninsured rate = percentage of adults 18–64 who lack health insurance coverage, derived from BRFSS and modeled to county level using multilevel regression and poststratification. CDC PLACES