Red states vs. Blue states. Republican vs. Democrats. Who has the higher level of uninsured when it comes to health care, and who has the lowest?
As you can see from the chart (above) just released by Gallup, Texas tops the list of states with the highest percent of uninsured residents, and Massachusetts tops the list of states with the lowest percent of uninsured residents. And if you continue down the lists, blue states have higher levels of insured residents than red states, overall.
In fact, every state in the top ten with the lowest level of uninsured residents is a blue state, and almost every state in the top ten with the highest level of uninsured residents is a red state. Exceptions are purple states and California.
Big surprise? Shouldn’t be. Democrats actually care about making sure Americans have access to health care (and not just emergency rooms) and Republicans want to take that right away from us.
Gallup explains:
Texas residents continue to be the most likely in the United States to lack health coverage, with 27.2% reporting being uninsured in the first half of 2011. At the other end of the spectrum is Massachusetts, where health insurance is required and 5.3% of residents lack coverage. These two states have represented the upper and lower bounds of uninsured rates since Gallup and Healthways started tracking coverage in 2008.
And notes,
States in the South and West continue to have higher numbers of uninsured adults than do those in the Northeast — consistent with what Gallup found in 2008, 2009, and 2010. Eight of the 10 states with the highest uninsured rates in the country are in the South and the other two — California and Alaska — are in the West.
Texas, California, and Florida — all three of which have an uninsured rate higher than 20% — have disproportionately large Hispanic populations, the demographic group Gallup finds to be the most likely to be uninsured.
Uninsured rates are lower in the Northeast, with 7 of 10 states with the fewest uninsured residents located there, as in past years.
Where does you state stand? See Gallup’s list of health care insured and uninsured coverage in all 50 states.
You could almost say a President Rick Perry could literally make you sick…