Texas ranks first for percentage of adults without health insurance

Texas leads the nation for the percentage of adult residents who lack health insurance, the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index shows.

Texas is the nation’s capital for adults without health insurance.

According to surveys conducted for the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, 27.8 percent of adults in Texas didn’t have health insurance in 2010. That’s up from 27 percent in 2009 and 25 percent in 2008, according to Gallup. At No. 2 among all states in 2010 was Mississippi (24.9 percent), with Louisiana (23.7 percent) in third place.

The poor showing by Texas can be traced, in part, to its large Hispanic population. Gallup says Hispanic Americans are the demographic group most likely to be uninsured in the United States — 38.9 percent in 2010. About 37 percent of Texans are Hispanic.

On the other end of the scale, Massachusetts — where state law requires all adult residents to have health insurance — continued to have the lowest percentage of uninsured residents: 4.7 percent. Connecticut was next in line, with just 9.9 percent of adults not having insurance. Minnesota had the third lowest percentage of uninsured adults — 10.5 percent.

The Gallup-Healthways numbers show 16.4 percent of American adults went without health insurance in 2010, up from 16.2 percent in 2009 and 14.8 percent in 2008.

“Most states saw a rise or no change in the percentage of uninsured residents in 2010 compared with 2009,” Gallup says. “Wyoming was the lone state where the uninsured rate decreased to a significant degree in 2010. More Americans in almost all states, however, were uninsured in 2010 than in 2008.”