10 states with highest and lowest uninsured rates
10 states with highest and lowest uninsured rates October 26, 2017
One of the main ideas behind the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was to enable everyone in the US to have access to healthcare insurance options. The rate of uninsured individuals had, in fact, dropped significantly since the ACA’s launch in 2012, but now it is on the increase once again.
Given the uncertainty of ACA’s future, individuals may be waiting to see what happens with revisions or with a new healthcare plan before signing on. Of course, there are some individuals who will not sign up for healthcare coverage, regardless of the options presented to them, and that should also be factored into the analysis of the numbers.
Gallup has measured the uninsured rate since 2008 with this year’s results showing that:
- 11.7% of U.S. adults lacked health insurance in second quarter of 2017
- Uninsured rate up slightly from 10.9% in the third and fourth quarters of 2016
- Percentage uninsured has dropped sharply among young adults since 2013
WalletHub has measured the rate of uninsured in each of the 50 states and ranked them based on the percentage of uninsured adults within each state. The ten states with the highest rates of uninsured individuals are, in reverse order:
- #50: Texas – 19.27%
- #49: Oklahoma – 15.92%
- #48: Alaska – 15.43%
- #47: Georgia – 15.06%
- #46: Mississippi – 14.23%
- #45: Florida – 14.16%
- #44: Nevada – 12.76%
- #43: Louisiana – 12.6%
- #42: Wyoming – 12.44%
- #41: North Carolina – 12.21%
The ten states with the lowest rates of uninsured individuals, as measured by WalletHub, are, in order:
- #1: Massachusetts – 2.95%
- #2: Hawaii – 3.9%
- #3: Vermont – 4.22%
- #4: Minnesota – 4.35%
- #5: Iowa – 4.78%
- #6: Rhode Island – 4.92%
- #7: Connecticut – 5.46%
- #8: Kentucky – 5.72%
- #9: Wisconsin – 5.76%
- #10: West Virginia – 6.17%
The study was conducted by WalletHub’s analysts, who “compared the overall insurance rates in the 50 states in 2016 using U.S. Census Bureau data.”