Coverage
Georgians for a Healthy Future advocates public policies to extend health insurance to more Georgians. There is a preponderance of evidence in the health policy literature documenting the important role that health insurance plays in obtaining necessary care, yet 1.6 million Georgians, 18 percent of our state’s population, are uninsured.(1)
The Importance of Health Insurance
Health insurance provides risk protection against the high cost of medical care and facilitates access to the health care delivery system. In Georgia, the uninsured are nearly four times more likely than the insured to have gone without a routine check-up in the past two years, are 7.5 times more likely than the insured to strongly disagree with the statement that they get the care they need(2), and are more likely than the insured to experience avoidable hospitalizations for conditions such as diabetes, hypertension, and asthma.(3)
Sources of Health Insurance
The majority of Georgians—about 55 percent of the state’s population, or 5.2 million people—obtain health insurance through an employer-sponsored plan. About 2.2 million have some form of public coverage (such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Peach Care), just over 340,000 Georgians purchase private health insurance on the individual market, and more than 1.6 million are uninsured.(4)
Source: Urban Institute and Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured estimates based on the Census Bureau’s March 2007 and 2008 Current Population Survey (CPS: Annual Social and Economic Supplements).
Profile of the Uninsured in Georgia
The majority of nonelderly uninsured Georgians are in working families: four-fifths of the uninsured are in families with at least one worker, and nearly 70 percent are in families with at least one full-time worker.(5) Among nonelderly Georgians, Hispanics are the racial or ethnic group most likely to be uninsured, with an uninsurance rate of 53 percent. Among African Americans, the uninsurance rate is 23 percent, and among Whites, the uninsurance rate is 12.5 percent.(6) Within Georgia, uninsurance rates vary between different regions of the state, from a low of 12 percent uninsured in the East Metro Public Health District to a high of 24 percent uninsured in the Clayton Public Health District. The South Central and Southeast Public Health Districts also feature high levels of uninsurance (22 percent in each of these districts).(7)
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