One in 7 Americans, one in 6 Americans under age of 65 doesn't have any sort of health insurance, according to a report. Lack of health insurance is greatest in the Southwest and lowest in the Northeast, with lot of variation, by about 20% among the states.

"Overall, 43.1 million Americans lacked health insurance in 2007," says CDC researcher Robin A. Cohen, PhD, tells WebMD. "Almost 54 million or 18.2% of Americans were uninsured for at least part of the year, and 30.6 million or 10.3% had been uninsured for more than a year at the time of interview."

The numbers of CDC come from the National Health Interview Survey, which is an annual in-person survey of U.S. civilians. The CDC released two reports. One combines 2004 to 2006 data from 41 states with at least 1,000 survey respondents. The other was based on preliminary 2007 survey data from the 20 largest states.

56 percent of unemployed adults under the age of 65 lacked health insurance for at least part of 2007; 32 percent were uninsured for more than a year. 22 percent of adults working lacked health insurance for at least part of 2007; 14 percent were uninsured for over a year. More than one in four 18 to 34 year old lacks health insurance, with uninsurance rates higher for men than for women.

A third of Hispanic-Americans lacked health insurance in 2007; about one-fourth were uninsured for about a year. In 2007, 37 percent of poor working age adults had some sort of public health insurance and 25 percent had private insurance. Americans with less than a high school education were two to four times more likely to be uninsured than better-educated adults.