State of shame?
Texas blows away other states in number of uninsured residents
For the fifth year running, Texas has the highest rate of residents without health insurance in the United States, according to a recent poll conducted by Gallup-Healthways.
While the national rate rests at 16.9 percent of all adults, the Lone Star State is far behind the others in coverage: The 2012 uninsured rate in Texas was 28.8 percent, or nearly three in 10 adults — an all-time high. In 2011, 27.6 percent of adults in Texas were without health insurance.
Louisiana, the No. 2 uninsured spot, has 24 percent of residents without coverage, but the 4.8 percentage points between that state and Texas qualifies as "the largest number separating these two spots on record."
On the other end of the spectrum is Massachusetts, where only 4.5 percent of residents are uninsured.
The report notes that the high uninsured rates in Texas and other border states are partly due to the large Hispanic populations, "a demographic that Gallup finds has the highest uninsured rate in the country."
Although Gov. Rick Perry vociferously denied millions of dollars in federal assistance to expand Medicaid to nearly 1 million uninsured Texans, our fearless leader and other Republican state legislators are devising a "Texas solution" to the financially burdensome issue.