HEALTHCARE 4 ALL PA-PUSH: Racial and Gender Differences in Pennsylvania's Uninsured

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Racial and Gender Differences in Pennsylvania's Uninsured

The Pittsburgh chapter of Healthcare 4 all PA has set up a website and blog to advocate for Single Payer healthcare in the area. We have a diverse group of activists with diverse talents who are eager to spread the word on the need for universal non profit medical care. For example Julie Sokolow is an excellent documentary filmmaker who also has a site called Healthy Artists, MaryPat Donegan is a long time activist, statewide board member, and Psychologist, Molly Rush is also a long time activist and Thomas Merton Center Board Member, Natalie Bencivenga is the editor of Two Day Mag and a social work student. Lloyd Stires is a social psychologist who specializes in mass media and behavior. We have many other capable volunteers which are too numerous to name.

My specialty is as a statistician. The Census Bureau has come out with county and state level estimates of the uninsured for the whole US. Recently they came out with estimates for the years 2008 and 2009 to give an impression of the impact of the recession on the uninsured before the new health care law was passed in 2010. The table below shows the rates for both years for Pennsylvania by gender shows a greater impact for men in the last two years than for women. The overall rate for the state was 10.6% in 2008 and 11.7% in 2009 (Margin of Error or MOE +/- 0.2% in both cases). Below is a graph with all 67 counties with male and female rates plotted against each other and a state map to show where each is located for 2009. The reasons for this difference could be due to gender differences in income. Women are a majoity of Medicaid recipients in the US and in PA.

	% 2008	MOE	% 2009	MOE
Male	11.7	0.3	13.3	0.3
Female	9.5	0.2	10.0	0.2

The Census Bureau also showed how the uninsured broke down at the state level across racial lines but unfortunately not at the county level. This could be due to there being a lack of racial diversity in many rural counties. The rates increased uniformly across the three groups in 2009. While the rates were highest among Hispanics followed by blacks and then whites, their respective margins of error likewise increased due to smaller numbers. These rates are outside the margins of error so we can be confident that they are different. According to the Kaiser Foundation, whites are 63% of Medicaid recipients in Pennsylvania blacks are 19% and Hispanics are 14%. These numbers contradict what right wing pundits often say about Hispanic/Latino's coming here to use up our services. The Daily Show clip below has a good take on this.