Who's Uninsured in the U.S.?

mary-c-curtis

Mary C. Curtis

National Correspondent
Posted:
09/25/09
Discover where your state stands when it comes to health insurance. National Public Radio is featuring a map showing -- by state and congressional district -- the percentage of people under 65 and children under 18 who don't have coverage, according to the Census Bureau.

Some highlights of the Census Bureau report: 17 percent of the U.S. population under 65 had no health insurance last year; Texas had the highest rate of uninsured at 26.5 percent, and Florida was second at 24.8 percent; Massachusetts, which requires most residents to have insurance, had the lowest rate of the uninsured under 65 at 4.6 percent. The rate for uninsured children under 18 ranged from 20.2 percent in Nevada to 2.1 percent in Massachusetts. Most Americans over age 65 have publicly funded Medicare insurance.


You can filter the findings by Republican, Democratic, swing and Blue Dog Democrat districts.
In the NPR story that the map accompanies, Peter Overby reports that many of the strongest opponents of a health care overhaul "represent districts with the largest percentage of people who don't have health insurance."

"Of the 100 congressional districts with the highest percentage rates of uninsured people, 53 are represented either by Republican lawmakers who are fighting the overhaul, or by conservative Blue Dog Democrats who have slowed down and diluted the overhaul proposals."
According to Robert Benincasa, producer for computer-assisted reporting at NPR, the map used a Sept. 21 Census Bureau data release that's under the American Community Survey one-year estimates series for 2008.