Texans Have the Worst Health Insurance Coverage Rate in the Nation

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Texans Have the Worst Health Insurance Coverage Rate in the Nation

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There are a number of reasons people do not have health insurance. One is that they cannot afford it. The Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, helped Americans get better access to healthcare, but even with this in place, close to 20 million Americans do not have healthcare coverage.

This varies considerably by state, but people who live in Texas have the worst healthcare coverage in the country. (These are the 21 states where the most people don’t have health insurance.)

Two other major issues beyond the Affordable Care Act have a significant effect on who has health insurance and who does not. One is poverty.

Texas ranks tenth among all states measured by the percentage of people who live below the poverty level, and for those struggling to pay for food and shelter, even subsidized insurance might be too expensive. (These are the most hated insurance companies in America.)

The other factor that pushes Texas into last place is that, for whatever reasons, some 20.4% residents don’t have health insurance – the highest rate in the country.

Click here to see all of the states where most people don’t have health insurance.

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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