More than 1 in 10 people in Tracy went without health insurance last year.

This year, though no official tally is due until 2010, health officials expect the number of people living without the safety net of a health care plan to increase.

Last year marked the first time the U.S. Census Bureau included a question about health insurance in the American Community Survey, an annual tally the agency relies on to update data between its decennial counts. That means the 2008 figures released this week offer the first official snapshot of the number of Americans who went without private or government-paid health insurance.

Since that count, the economy has sunk deeper into recession, unemployment has increased and almost certainly so has the number of people without health insurance, according to the bureau.

In Tracy, exactly 11.1 percent of the 74,856 recorded people in the city counted by the federal bureau last year had no health insurance.

In real numbers, that means there were 8,466 people in town who would have had to wait, on average, several hours in line at a clinic or public hospital emergency room to see a doctor; pay in cash for treatment they did get; or just eschew medical visits because of the hassle or expense of health care without coverage. It’s about the same number of people without work in Tracy, which clocked a citywide unemployment rate of 9.9 percent in August.

In San Joaquin County, 16.5 percent of the population claimed to be uninsured, compared with 17.8 percent in all of California. The most recently published jobless rate for the county was 15.7 percent, again slightly less than the rate of uninsured folks in the area.

The growing waiting lists at local clinics serve as a fair indicator that many more people are losing insurance, said employees at local health centers.

Sutter Tracy’s Healthy Connections Family Health Resource Center — which serves the uninsured, underinsured or government-insured — has seen a 40 percent increase in the number of patients passing through its doors: 1,136 clients as of Aug. 31 this year, compared with 814 in that same time frame in 2008.

The nonprofit Sutter Tracy Community Hospital that backs the center has seen an 18 percent increase in the number of patients visiting its emergency room this year versus 2008, according to hospital spokeswoman Karen Mudd. Along with the increase comes a higher number of patients who pay in cash, and more people than ever have turned to emergency room care after losing employer-paid coverage.

The term “uninsured” refers to people without private insurance and who receive no care from a government-sponsored health plan, such as Medi-Cal or Medicare. It refers to the people who have to pay out of pocket in the event of any health problem, whether it’s a life-threatening illness or a sore throat from the common cold.

It refers to people like unemployed 48-year-old Ray Naplot of Tracy, who relies on relatively cheap care from doctors at San Joaquin County General Hospital, where, as an uninsured patient, he must wait in line severalhours just for a checkup. Laid off from his warehouse job a year ago, he said he’s tried to stay in good enough shape to avoid doctor visits.

“Thankfully, I’m pretty healthy,” he said outside Tracy WorkNet, 213 W. 11th St., where he spends hours a week chasing down job leads. “Still, you got to weigh how often you get medical help.”

People like Naplot, many of them with chronic ailments or families with small children, count on cheap care provided by places like Tracy Family Practice — or charity care, such as that offered by a trio of Tracy doctors twice monthly at Tracy Interfaith Ministries, where Tracy physician Michael Hurst spearheads a nonprofit called the Tracy Free Clinic.

Unlike the downtown clinic that treats the government-insured, Hurst’s nonprofit targets the completely uninsured: Those who have lost employer-backed coverage, who don’t qualify for public benefits and who can’t afford a private plan.

See more numbers from the American Community Survey.