Study: Florida Has 3rd Highest Uninsured Rate

The roll out of the Affordable Care Act has reduced the number of uninsured Floridians by nearly 700,000, but the state still has one of the nation’s highest uninsured rates, according to a study released by WalletHub.

The website that’s dedicated to personal finance, crunched numbers across all 50 states and the District of Columbia to gauge how big of an impact the act, also known as Obamacare, has had. When all was said and done, WalletHub’s analysts found Texas had the highest uninsured rate in 2014 at 19.06 percent. Alaska was the second worst in the nation with a 17.21 percent uninsured rate. Florida’s 16.57 percent earned it the distinction of coming in with the third highest rate of people who are not covered by health insurance.

To arrive at its findings, WalletHub analysts compared overall insurance rates across the country between 2010 and 2014 using data gleaned from the U.S. Census Bureau. Results were also broken out by race and ethnicity, household income, age group and type of insurance.

Massachusetts earned the honor of having the lowest uninsured rate at 3.28 percent. Vermont came in a close second at 4.95 percent.

The overall analysis of Obamacare’s impact on Florida included these findings:

• The rate of uninsured children dropped by 26.47 percent between 2010 and 2014
• The adult uninsured rate fell 21.85 percent between 2010 and 2014
• The rate of people publicly insured is 38.06 percent
• The rate of privately insured Floridians is 61.94 percent
• The state’s pre-Obamacare insurance rate was 21.26 percent. An estimated 695,899 people have gained coverage since the act went into effect

To find out more, check out WalletHub’s study online.

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