Don’t Get Sick in This State

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Don’t Get Sick in This State

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Millions of Americans get sick each year. Diseases range from common colds to COVID-19, and injuries from broken fingers to car accidents. Not all cities and states give the same level of care. Some larger, poorer cities have only modest medical resources. Patients often have to be admitted to hospitals. People can wait a long time for ambulances in some metro areas.

The Worst Health Care

A new study shows that there is a vast difference among states when it comes to the level of care. Forbes Advisors took into account the cost of health care, the number of health care providers, levels of insurance coverage, how difficult it is to get insurance and how long it takes to get insurance payments.

Among the results was that most of the states with the worst health care are in the South: Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina, Mississippi, South Carolina, Arkansas and Texas.

On a scale of 1 to 100, with the highest number being the worst, Georgia ranked at the bottom of all states with a score of 100.
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Why does Georgia do so poorly? It is third highest for percentage of residents who lack health insurance coverage (12.63%), fifth highest for kidney disease mortality rate (18.87 deaths per 100,000 state residents), eighth highest stroke mortality rate (44.27 deaths per 100,000 state residents) and eighth highest average deductible for residents with single health insurance coverage through an employer ($2,269 annually). (These are the most obese states in America.)
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What to Do About It

How do people who live in Georgia get around this? Live in a city with a major medical center, particularly one linked to a teaching hospital. Get the statistics about the average time that ambulances show up for emergencies. Check the ratio of doctors and hospitals per capita.

It may be best to move for those who cannot find parts of the state with better-than-average medical scores.

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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