Since President Clinton's plans for universal health-care coverage collapsed a year ago, another million Americans have lost their health insurance, and the Clinton administration and some outside analysts say this trend would be almost doubled by GOP plans to rein in Medicaid spending.

Estimates of the number of uninsured Americans now run as high as 43.4 million, more and more of whom are from the working poor. The annual rate at which the ranks of the uninsured have been growing has increased steadily in recent years, to a current annual rate of 1.2 million, by the latest estimates.