Health Insurance in Missouri - 8.4% go without it

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. - About 8.4 percent of Missourians lack health insurance, with young adults the most likely to be going without it, according to a survey released Thursday.

The survey conducted for the state Department of Health and Senior Services estimates that 463,000 Missourians do not have health insurance.

"Although many people expected the uninsured numbers to be much higher, we still have nearly a half million residents that do not have health coverage," said department director Richard Dunn. "Missouri must continue its efforts to expand access to affordable coverage and care."

Of those who were uninsured, nearly 39 percent said they had needed health care attention but didn't get it because of the cost, the survey found.

The telephone survey of 6,995 households was conducted from March to early July by the University of Missouri using questions developed by the University of Minnesota, said Connie Mihalevich, the department's administrator for community health systems and support.

It had a margin of error of plus or minus 0.9 percentage points.

The survey showed that Missourians ages 19-24 were the most likely to be uninsured, with 20.1 percent lacking health coverage. Of adults age 19-64, 12.3 percent of those surveyed were uninsured. Children and senior citizens had the best insurance rates, primarily because of the wider availability of government-funded health care.

The 8.4 percent overall uninsured rate was based on the number of respondents who said they did not have health insurance at the time they were surveyed. A slightly higher 10.9 percent said they had lacked health insurance at some point during the past year, although some of them may have been currently insured.

Among other results of the survey:

_ The uninsured rate was higher among those with less education and in families earning less than 150 percent of the federal poverty level, which is $28,275 annually for a family of four. Of those without high school diplomas, 15.3 percent lacked health insurance, compared with 11.9 percent of high school graduates and just 3.5 percent of college graduates.

_ Residents in urban areas were more likely to have health insurance than those in rural areas. The St. Louis area posted the best rate with 5.8 percent of people uninsured followed by the Kansas City region at 7.9 percent. Predominantly rural northeastern Missouri had the highest uninsured rate at 13.1 percent, followed by southeast Missouri at 11.9 percent.

_ People self-employed or working part time were more likely to lack health insurance. Of the self-employed, 19.1 percent lacked insurance, a rate roughly three times the 6.6 percent for people employed by someone else. Just 5.4 percent of people working more than a 40-hour week lacked health insurance, compared with 20.7 percent of people working 21-30 hours a week.