"We're not seeing great strides in health care coverage for many Americans." So wrote research scientist Sasha Guttentag in GoodRx's recent survey on health insurance. The annual study, conducted in late January and based on responses from 1,202 Americans, revealed that 13% of the U.S. population is uninsured. This is up from 2019, when the survey showed the nationwide uninsured rate to be 11%. Among those study participants who did have insurance, 34% reported their premiums increasing, and 22% said said their copays have gone up as well. High costs related to the COVID-19 pandemic has made matters worse for several workers, write Sheldon Whitehouse and Sherrod Brown in an op-ed. They point to a FAIR Health analysis of 30 billion private health care claims which showed the average charge for a COVID-19 patient requiring an in-patient stay to be an estimated $73,300. That amount drops to $38,221 for an insured patient utilizing in-network services. Since health insurance is regulated at the state level, varying degrees of income and policy support state by state can lead to drastically different coverage rates. A new study from AdvisorSmith takes a deep dive into the percentage of residents of all 50 states and the District of Columbia who do (and don't) have insurance. Using data from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey to determine the percentage of the population not covered by health insurance, the study ranked the states by the proportion of their population that was not insured. See the top five most and least insured states in our slideshow above, and click here for the full study.
Complete your profile to continue reading and get FREE access to BenefitsPRO, part of your ALM digital membership.
Your access to unlimited BenefitsPRO content isn’t changing.
Once you are an ALM digital member, you’ll receive:
- Breaking benefits news and analysis, on-site and via our newsletters and custom alerts
- Educational webcasts, white papers, and ebooks from industry thought leaders
- Critical converage of the property casualty insurance and financial advisory markets on our other ALM sites, PropertyCasualty360 and ThinkAdvisor
Already have an account? Sign In Now
© 2024 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.