For example, Kaiser Permanente plans in Georgia have a declination rate of 34 percent, but in Hawaii the same company has a much lower rate of 22 percent, analysts said.

HealthPocket, a free website that compares and ranks all health plans, analyzed publicly available insurance records of 9,450 plans for individuals and families under the age of 65 to determine the average declination rate of health insurance applications, and compared this average to the declination rate of individual insurers.

Beginning Jan. 1, 2014, under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, insurers are prohibited from discriminating against or charging higher rates for any individuals based on gender or pre-existing medical conditions.

“What is unclear is whether some insurers have increased their declination rate in order to improve risk pool health and profitability prior to 2014, when [the pre-existing provision goes into effect],” Coleman says.

The research called out the plans with the highest declination rates. They are: South Dakota's John Alden Life Insurance Company (73 percent), Utah's Assurant Health (71 percent), North Dakota's Assurant Health (58 percent), Kentucky's Time Insurance Company (56 percent), and Idaho's Assurant Health (56 percent).

Additionally, some non-profit insurance companies have higher declination rates than for-profit insurers, analysts found. Kaiser Permanente in Georgia, for example, has a declination rate of 34 percent while Humana, a large for-profit insurer in Georgia, has a declination rate of 23 percent.

But East Coasters fare the best with their chances of getting health insurance. Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Vermont all have zero declination rates.