California Uninsured Statistics
The California Health Care Almanac recently released its annual report on the uninsured in the state. The report has been released annually for over 20 years and over that period the percentage of Californian’s, who are not eligible for Medi-care, and are not covered by an employer’s healthcare insurance has risen by 9%. The rate of uninsured Californian’s has risen only 6 tenth of one percent in the past 8 years, from 20% in 2000 to 20.6% in 2008 (The latest year that statistics are available). California has a higher percentage of uninsured residents than the National average and the largest actual number of uninsured individuals—6.6 million.
The general trend of the healthcare insurance picture in California is that both the number and percentage of residents that are uninsured is increasing at a rate that is slightly greater than the rate of the uninsured in the nation as a whole. While California has the largest number of uninsured individuals of any state, it ranks 8th for the number of uninsured when stated as percentage of population with a rate of 20.5%. The national average for the uninsured is 17.5%, and Texas has the highest percentage of uninsured residents at 27.6%
The trend for who provides the healthcare insurance coverage is changing from privately provided coverage to publicly provided coverage. Employer provided healthcare insurance has declined by 5.2% over the past 8 years, while individually purchased healthcare insurance has increased only 1.1%, leaving the public to provide healthcare insurance to increase by 3.6%. The number of people eligible for public healthcare insurance is increasing faster than the number of individuals receiving public healthcare insurance.
An interesting statistic is the one concerning the changes in the types of insurance coverage in different income brackets. The insurance coverage source (private, public, or uninsured) stays essentially the same in the lowest (under $25,000/year) and the highest (over $75,000/year) income brackets. The trend in the two middle ($25,000 – $75,000) income brackets is moving from private sources to public sources and uninsured. The percentage of the two middle income groups who rely on public sources for their healthcare insurance has essentially doubled from 1994 to 2008
The highest number of uninsured residents is among the self-employed and those working for employers with less than 25 employees. It is curious to note that among residents employed by the public sector, the uninsured rate is 8.3%, higher than the national average for public employees.
As is to be expected, the rate of uninsured individuals is highest in the younger age groups when children are no longer covered by their parent’s healthcare insurance plan. Younger individuals tend to have lower family incomes and the lower income brackets also have higher uninsured rates than higher income brackets
The percentage of uninsured individuals differs along racial/ethnic lines as well. The only ethnic group that has a larger percentage of uninsured individuals than the state average is the Latino group at 29.9%. The report also lists the uninsured rate of non-citizens in California at 48.3%.
Analysis of the Data
While the report is titled ‘California’s Uninsured’, it spends a significant amount of time tracking the trends on who provides the source healthcare insurance. Whether the individual is covered by employer provided healthcare insurance, privately purchased healthcare insurance, or publicly funded healthcare insurance, the aggregate will be the total of insured residents. If you do not have healthcare insurance it doesn’t really matter to you who provides the healthcare insurance for those who have it.
One statistic that clearly demonstrates a major flaw in the entire healthcare insurance system is the number of individually purchased healthcare plans. Only 7.7% of residents purchase their own healthcare insurance. This means that very few California’s are taking responsibility for their own healthcare.
The fact that California’s uninsured rate is slightly higher than the national average can be explained for two reasons:
1) California’s population is younger than the national average, and many young people make the sound financial decision to forego healthcare insurance.
2) California has a high rate of non-residents, and non-residents have a very high rate of uninsured for healthcare. Latinos account for 58% of California’s uninsured population.
The complete study can be found in the California Health Care Almanac: California’s Uninsured, December 2009
this has been ongoing for a long time we have been having a lot of problems with HMO’s i haven’t heard that it is this high in California. I hope the current administration will fix it soon.