Despite the efforts made to spread awareness of the Affordable Care Act, many remain without coverage.
Five years ago, when the Affordable Care Act was first launched, the health insurance coverage rate in Florida was among the lowest in the country, and now that half a decade has passed, Florida’s rank among the uninsured states is still in third place.
That said, despite the large uninsured rate in Florida in terms of health plans, the situation has improved.
Now that the health care reform is starting to settle in and as coverage rates take off across the country, the number of people with policies in Florida has also increased. Therefore, while the rate of people without health insurance is still third highest in the state, it still has more covered people than it used to. The state continues to see this as a positive and improving coverage situation, even if the uninsured rate isn’t as low as in most other states.
The results of a new WalletHub study show that 16.57 percent of people in Florida are without health insurance.
The study determined that this means there are 695,899 people in the state who do not have a health plan. The only states in the country that have a higher percentage of people who don’t have health policies are Alaska and Texas. Moreover, only Texas and California have a total number of uninsured residents that is greater than that of Florida. That said, this is merely because those two states have populations that are considerably larger than that of Florida.
On the other end of the spectrum, Massachusetts is the state that has the largest health coverage rate, with only 3.28 percent of the state’s population living without a policy.
That said, while Florida’s uninsured rate is quite high, it has been falling quite a bit. It has dropped by an estimated 4.69 percent since the Affordable Care Act became effective in 2010. That is a promising rate of improvement and is the 11th best in the country.
The report did note that the health insurance coverage gap isn’t closing at the same rate for all populations across the state. For example, among children in Florida, 9.34 percent remain uninsured, which is the fifth highest in the state. It has fallen by only 3.36 percent since 2010, but it is the eighth largest improvement in the country.
