Email, Chris Lee, senior communications officer, Kaiser Family Foundation, May 24, 2018
3:24 p.m.
I went through our data and resources and checked with one of our experts. See some answers below in red text.
Chris Lee
From: Selby, Gardner (CMG-Austin)
Sent: Thursday, May 24, 2018 3:11 PM
Chris:
Good afternoon. I write because we’re fact-checking a candidate’s fresh claim that “one in six Texans don’t have health care. We’re the most uninsured state in the U.S.”
Our analysis of Census Bureau data indicates that 15 percent of Texas’ total population is uninsured. That’s a higher share than in any other state. This is the most recent available data from Census.
Also, our experts reminded me that uninsured rates typically look at just the non-elderly (under 65) population, since nearly all elderly people can get coverage through Medicare. If you look only at the non-elderly population, Texas still has the highest uninsured rate, at 17% (which translates to 1 in 6). https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/nonelderly-0-64/?currentTimeframe=0&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22Uninsured%22,%22sort%22:%22desc%22%7D
It looks to me like the foundation calculated based on 2016 Census Bureau data the information pasted below. Do you have better charts showing these (or more recent) results that we could include in our story? Is the presented information the latest available? Any other considerations or expert research recommendations?
You can use the map feature from either of the above links if you’d rather see the data displayed as a map rather than a table:
There is (some) more recent data available in the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), which is under the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The data are from 2017 but were released the other day. See page 7, Figure 12 and page A24, Table XVI in this document - https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhis/earlyrelease/insur201805.pdf. (FYI, I found that document hanging in the “What’s New” section of this CDC page.) The NHIS data also seems to show that Texas has the highest uninsured rate, but the report doesn’t display data for all 50 states.
Years ago, we looked into Gov. Perry’s claim challenging the idea that a lack of health insurance breaks out to a lack of health care. How does the KFF analyze this distinction? How would the foundation rank states by access to health care? Other recommended resources?
You can find a good summary of how a lack of insurance affects access to health care in this section of our Uninsured Primer -- https://www.kff.org/report-section/the-uninsured-a-primer-key-facts-about-health-insurance-and-the-uninsured-under-the-affordable-care-act-how-does-lack-of-insurance-affect-access-to-health-care/
We don’t rank states by access to health care. You might take a look at the Commonwealth Fund’s Health System Scorecards, which includes a data tool you can use to see how they rank states by various measures.
I’d be grateful to hear back soon by phone or email. As ever, we rely on attributable on-the-record information for our stories.
As mentioned, here is the 2016 information I pulled from the KFF website here:
Thanks,
g.
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W. Gardner Selby
Reporter / News
Austin American-Statesman
PolitiFact Texas