About 43.6 million people in the United States, or 14.8 percent of the population, had no health insurance in 2006, according to a survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released Monday. About 54.5 million people in the country, or 18.6 percent of the population, had no insurance for at least part of 2006. Texas had the largest percentage of people without health insurance, with 23.8 percent of the population not covered, the report said. Michigan had the lowest, at 7.7 percent.
After navigating through the CDC website and finding the original data used by the NY Times, I found that Hispanics were most likely to be uninsured during the time of the study, with 32.4% of the population uninsured (compared to the 10.4% for non-Hispanic white and 15.7% non-Hispanic black). See the study here. The real question is, why didn’t the NY Times mention this huge disparity in its article? Race (and racism) are obviously huge factors which lead to health disparities–and lack of health care is one of the largest problems facing low-income and people of color communities in the US today.
