Texas leads U.S. in uninsured rate
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Texas has the country's largest share of Americans under 65 without health insurance, according to new Census Bureau data.
Why it matters: Nearly 19% of Texans are uninsured as of 2022. It's a big improvement over 2006, when 27.6% of Texans were uninsured — but still nearly double the national uninsured rate of 9.5%.
The big picture: The uninsured rate fell in 627 U.S. counties and increased in only 23 between 2021 and 2022 — meaning Americans are trending toward being covered rather than not.
Yes, but: More recent preliminary data shows an uptick in the overall uninsured rate as states cut Medicaid rolls and unemployment rises, Axios' Maya Goldman reports.
- Texas, for example, has removed more than 2 million people from its Medicaid program since April 2023, mostly for procedural reasons.
Zoom in: Collin (10.6%), Denton (11.5%) and Rockwall (11.2%) counties have some of the lowest percentages of uninsured Texans.
- In Dallas County, more than 528,000 residents are uninsured, or 23.6% of the population.
- In Tarrant County, more than 337,000 residents are uninsured, or 18.2%.
Stunning stat: Around 232,000 Hidalgo County residents along the Mexico-U.S. border don't have insurance. That's 30.2% of that county's population — the highest percentage of a populous county in the state.
Zoom out: After Texas, Oklahoma (14.3%), Wyoming (14.1%) and Florida (13.9%) have the highest share of uninsured residents among U.S. states and Washington, D.C.
- Texas, Wyoming and Florida are also among the small group of holdouts that never adopted Obamacare's Medicaid expansion.
- Massachusetts (2.9%), Washington, D.C. (3.1%) and Hawai'i (4.3%) have the lowest.