Maine counties have the highest percentages of uninsured in New England, and an estimated 14 percent of Washington County residents have no health insurance, representing the greatest concentration in the state, a new report found.
Aroostook County has the second-highest rate of uninsured, with 13 percent, and Penobscot, Piscataquis and Franklin counties tie for third highest.
Washington County’s ranking has not changed in the year since Obamacare was rolled out, though it has gotten better since 2013, when that number was 18 percent.
The New York Times analyzed data provided by two organizations that track statistics on health insurance.
It found that states that did not expand Medicaid to cover poorer people tend to have greater concentrations of uninsured.
According to The Times:
… many of the people who lack insurance in states with a lot of uninsured people are effectively unable to benefit from Obamacare programs because of their low incomes and local politicians’ decisions to forgo Medicaid expansion. More than three million people in 19 states remain stuck in a “Medicaid gap,” too poor to qualify for subsidies in the new marketplaces, but unable to get into a government program.
Medicaid expansion continues to be a huge predictor of how many people remain uninsured in a given state.
The map shows that, in the northeast, Maine is an outlier. No other New England state has a county with a double-digit percentage of uninsured. Every other state expanded Medicaid. (On the map, thicker borders denote the states with expansions.)
LePage has vetoed an expansion of Medicaid — known as MaineCare here — on five separate occasions, and has said it would be “ruinous.” His administration has argued it would be more expensive than proponents think.
The Times’s analysis showed that states with the greatest percentage of uninsured tend to be in the south and southwest, and tend to be more Republican.
Fourteen percent uninsured is high, but there are many counties in other states that are much higher. In Presidio County, Texas 34 percent have no insurance. Navajo County in Arizona has 23 percent.
Cumberland and York counties have the lowest percentages of uninsured. Click on this map to explore the data.
(Featured homepage image by the Fresno Bee)
