Texas Leads Nation In Number Of Uninsured

Last Tuesday, the U.S. Census Bureau released a report on income, poverty and health insurance in the United States in 2005-2007 (PDF). Unfortunately, Texas took first place in the percentage of state population that does not have health insurance: In the three year period from 2005 to 2007, an astounding 24.4% of Texas residents did not have health insurance.

Let's think about this amazing—and tragic—number. Nearly a quarter of the population of the Lone Star State is uninsured. In terms of raw numbers, we were second in the nation behind California, but there was a lower overall percentage of Californians that were uninsured (18.4%). We also did significantly worse than the national average (15.4%) for the three year period 2005-2007.

If you want to know what Senator John McCain's health care position will look like, you need go no further than Dallas' National Center for Policy Analysis and Dr. Jeff Goodman. Dr. Goodman is a fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis and a McCain advisor on health care. Here's what he had to say about this Census report:

Mr. Goodman, who helped craft Sen. John McCain’s healthcare policy, said anyone with access to an emergency room effectively has insurance, albeit the government acts as the payer of last resort.

“So I have a solution. And it will cost not one thin dime,” Mr. Goodman said. “The next president of the United States should sign an Executive Order requiring the Census Bureau to cease and desist from describing any American — even illegal aliens — as uninsured. Instead, the Bureau should categorize people according to the likely source of payment should they need care.

“So, there you have it. Voila! Problem solved.”

Mr. Goodman said that only people who are denied care are truly uninsured and everyone who gets care is effectively insured by some mechanism.

“So instead of producing worthless statistics that people fling around in vacuous editorials and pointless debates, the Census Bureau should produce meaningful numbers, identifying all of the sources of funds people will draw on if they need medical care,” Mr. Goodman said.

John McCain: Four more years of pretending the challenges that face Americans with only one house don't exist.