Young American adults who don't have health insurance are about half as likely as those with coverage to have a regular doctor (36 percent vs. 70 percent), says a federal government report released Wednesday.
About five million adults ages 19 to 23 didn't have health insurance for the entire year in 2006, and 30 percent said they didn't think coverage was worth the cost, according to the latest News and Numbers from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
More than two-thirds of young adults without insurance for the entire year did not see a doctor. Men were more likely than women to be uninsured -- 30 percent vs. 18 percent.
The AHRQ also said that 46 percent (2.2 million) of uninsured young adults worked full time and 26 percent (1.3 million) worked part time. The majority -- about 81 percent -- of the five million young adults without coverage through all of 2006 were not full-time students.