New census data on uninsured remind us why we needed health reform

One in every four people under 65 living in Texas, New Mexico and Florida had no health insurance in 2007, according to new census data released this week. And that was before workers began to lose their jobs and health insurance because of the recession that began in December of 2007, as the Washington Post noted.

The census data present state-by-state portraits of the uninsured population, showing that there were dramatic differences in your likelihood of being uninsured, depending on where you were living in 2007:

• Hawaii was a good place to live if you wanted health insurance -- only 10.3 percent of its residents under 65 were uninsured. So was Minnesota, with 11 percent, Wisconsin with 11.2 percent and Connecticut with 12.5 percent. Not surprising, Massachusetts, which had focused intensively on its own health reform plan, had the lowest uninsured rate at 9.0 percent.
• Bad places to live for health insurance purposes included Texas (26.8 percent), New Mexico (26.7 percent) and Florida (24.2 percent) , as well as Louisiana (22.8 percent), Nevada (20.7 percent) and Mississippi (20.5 percent).

As the Washington Post noted, the data are also available by county and show tremendous differences. Compare, for example, the 6.6 percent uninsured rate in Plymouth County, Massachusetts, with the 50 percent uninsured rate in Kenedy County, Texas.

The census data can be sorted by gender, race, age and income level -- presenting a handy tool for health advocates interested in how those factors affect whether people have health insurance or not. Here are a few examples of what we can learn by using this database:

• In most states, the percentage of uninsured men is higher than the percentage of uninsured women. While the database doesn't provide an explanation for this, we have long known that this is because more women qualify for Medicaid. So, in Louisiana, for example, 21.3 percent of women under 65 were uninsured in 2007, compared to 24.4 percent of men. In New York, which has a relatively generous Medicaid program, 13.4 percent of women were uninsured, compared to 17 percent of men.

• Race makes a difference. For example, the percentage of black people in New Jersey who were uninsured in 2007 was 20.3 percent, compared to an overall statewide rate of 18.5 percent.