(Salt
Lake City, UT) – New Utah Department of Health (UDOH) data show that 376,600
Utahns, or 13.2 percent of the total population, went without health insurance
in 2012. The figure is extremely close
to the 2011 overall uninsured rate, when an estimated 377,700 people, or 13.4
percent of the population, had no health coverage.
These
estimates come from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), a
cell and landline telephone survey that measures key public health
indicators.
Findings
from the new data include:
• 48,200 children ages 0-18 years were
uninsured and living below 200 percent of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL),
making them eligible for Utah’s CHIP or Medicaid programs.
• 9 percent of Utah children ages 0-17
years (80,500) had no health insurance in 2012.
• 185,900 Utahns living at or below 138
percent FPL are uninsured, this is the population targeted for a potential
Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act.
• There was a slight drop in the number of
uninsured young adults ages 19-26 years: 78,100 (20.9 percent) uninsured in
2012, down from 87,600 (23.6 percent) in 2011.
• The percent of uninsured part-time
workers age 19-64 also fell in 2012, to
19.6 percent, from 26.6 percent in 2011.
However, the overall number of uninsured individuals the percentage
represents remained nearly the same, perhaps because there are more part-time
workers overall.
• Among self-employed Utahns, 26.1 percent
reported being uninsured in 2012.
“Clearly
the problem of the uninsured continues in Utah,” said UDOH Executive Director
Dr. David Patton. “There are many
organizations and individuals working in our state to address the problem of
the uninsured. Hopefully these new data
will help them better target their efforts as we all work toward a common
goal of reducing the number of Utahns who go without health insurance.”
Patton
also encouraged families with uninsured children to look into Utah’s CHIP and
Medicaid programs to see if they qualify for coverage.
The
source of the 2012 data, the BRFSS, is a household health survey overseen by
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and conducted by
individual state health departments.
Additional data on the estimated number of uninsured Utahns can be found
at http://health.utah.gov/opha/publications/2012brfss/Highlights_2012.pdf.
Further
data, including estimates on the uninsured broken down by small area, health
district, ethnicity, and race, will be available in late October at http://ibis.health.utah.gov.
Media Contact:
Tom
Hudahko
UDOH
Public Information Officer
(o)
801-538-6232
(m) 801-560-4649
