As the Obama administration faces opposition to its health-care reform plan, more Asian Americans lost health-care coverage in 2008, the poverty rate rose in this community, and income levels also suffered, according to the U.S. Census Bureau's latest report released Sept. 10. Data specific to Indian Americans was not yet available, a Census Bureau official told News India Times.

Titled "Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States, 2008," the report shows the uninsured rate for Asians in 2008 rose to 17.6 percent, up from 16.8 percent.

Meanwhile, the number of people without health insurance coverage nationwide rose from 45.7 million in 2007 to 46.3 million in 2008, while the percentage remained unchanged at 15.4 percent.

On the median household income front, Americans don't need a census report to bring home the truth. Overall in the United States, the real median household income fell 3.6 percent between 2007 and 2008, from $52,163 to $50,303. This breaks a string of three years of annual income increases and coincides with the recession that started in December 2007. It did not leave Asian Americans, the highest-earning community in the country, untouched. Between 2007 and 2008, they lost 4.4 percent of their income now down to $65,637 per household. That was a higher loss than that suffered by blacks, who lost 2.8 percent, but less than Hispanics, who lost 5.6 percent.

Advocates have been pointing to high poverty rates among Asian Americans deflecting the notion of the model minority.

Their fears are borne out by the census report. While the increase in the poverty rate nationwide between 2007 and 2008 (from 12.5 percent to 13.2 percent) was the highest since 1997, for Asians as a whole this rose from 10.2 percent in 2007 to 11.8 percent in 2008. And the poverty rate among the foreign-born population increased as well, up from 16.5 percent o 17.8 percent.

Some 300,000 more foreign-born dropped below the poverty line between 2007 and 2008.

A troubling statistic was the rise in the already high poverty rates among foreign-born noncitizens. From an already high 21.3 percent in 2007, it rose 2 percent to 23.3 percent in last year.