Journal of Medicine - Some numbers are so big, they are meaningless. So when we hear public officials talk about the 50.7 million uninsured, most of us lack perspective on just how many people that really is.

But how big is 50.7 million uninsured? That's the question we studied. We found that having 50.7 million people uninsured is equal to:

• 16 percent of the United States population (about 1 in 6 people).

• The combined population of Oklahoma, Connecticut, Iowa, Mississippi, Kansas, Kentucky, Arkansas, Utah, Oregon, Nevada, New Mexico, West Virginia, Nebraska, Idaho, Maine, New Hampshire, Hawaii, Rhode Island, Montana, Delaware, North Dakota, South Dakota, Alaska, Vermont and Wyoming. (That's 25 states!)

• 1.5 times the population of Canada.

• 1.8 times the number of Twitter users in the United States.

• About equal to the number of people who voted for George W. Bush for president in 2000.

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