Texans in the Workforce: Nearly One Third Are Uninsured

The Census Bureau defines people as insured if they were covered by any type of health insurance coverage for part or all of the previous year. In order to be categorized as uninsured, an individual would have to be uninsured for all of the previous year.

Nearly a third of people in Texas who are of working age are uninsured. Although Texas is the fastest-growing state, 31 percent of its residents, aged 18 to 64, are uninsured and generally unable to receive medical care of any kind.

“There is a broad and obviously inaccurate presumption that employers provide health insurance,” said Dr. Charles Tolbert, chair and professor of sociology at Baylor University. “By starting with the working-age population, who are most widely believed to be covered by employer insurance, the data are all that much more telling,” he said.

Texas has more than 10 percent more uninsured than the average U.S. state. The national average is 20.2 percent for that age group, according to senior research analysts Debbie McMahon and Wes Hinze of Baylor’s Center for Community Research and Development.

In the midst of national debate over the nation’s health care system, the figures are “the most recent, most complete set of data out there that include health estimates for small areas,” Hinze said.

Counties with the six largest Texas cities fared worse than the national average in the working-age category, McMahon said.

They included:

Harris County, which includes Houston - Texas’ largest city - 37.6 percent
Dallas County, which includes Dallas, 33.3 percent
Tarrant County, which includes Fort Worth, 27.8 percent
Bexar County, which includes San Antonio, 27.3 percent
Travis County, which includes Austin, 29.4 percent;
El Paso County, which includes El Paso, 40.2 percent.

Several counties in West Texas and along the border with Mexico had rates of uninsured people ranging from 34 to 51 percent, the analysis showed.

McMahon and Hinze chose to look at people of working age who have access to several health care options, because people over 65 are eligible for Medicare, while children are often insured through their parents or through the Children’s Health Insurance Program.

“The strain on the health care system with almost one in three people without insurance is serious,” McMahon said.

Other states ranking low in health insurance coverage were New Mexico, with the second highest rate of uninsured, followed by Florida, Louisiana and California.

States which fared best included Minnesota, which had the lowest rate of uninsured, followed by Massachusetts, Hawaii, Wisconsin and Maine.