Most Recent County Level Uninsured Estimates for Pennsylvania

Here is a review of last year's county level estimates for the Small Area Health Insurance Estimates or SAHIE which were out for the years 2008 and 2009 for each county in the United States.  The 2010 estimates should be out in the fall.  I reported the county estimates for the years 2007, 2008, and 2009 in the 67 counties in Pennsylvania to get an idea of the impact of the recession on the uninsured at the local level in the State.  There is a strong correlation in the rates of uninsured and median housing income for each county accounting for 42% of the variability as can be seen in the above graph. 

For 2009 the top 10 counties in uninsured rate for the state are:

**Update**

I realize that many do not know where the state's 67 counties are located so I've added a Pennsylvania map for reference.  For example Forest is in the Northwest, Union is in the center and you should be able to find Philadelphia.  The three year trend in the uninsured can be seen below.

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**Related Posts**

Racial and Gender Differences in Pennsylvania's Uninsured

New Interactive Map on County Poverty Rates

Slate.com has produced an interactive map showing how poverty rates have changed in each US county from 2007 to 2010 to show the impact of the recession.  Only Bradford County in the northeast has shown a significant decrease for Pennsylvania from 14% in 2007 to 10.9% in 2010.  The other 66 counties in PA either increased or stayed the same.  Crawford County had the largest increase for PA from 14.1% to 19.7% with the other largest increases in the western border counties Mercer and Beaver. 

You can see the profile for Pennsylvania by placing the arrow over PA on the map, dragging it to the center, and enlarging it by clicking on the plus sign in the upper left hand corner.  By moving the arrow over each county you will see a window with the name of it on the right and the poverty trend from 2007 to 2010.

**Related Posts**

County Health Rankings

 

Correlating PA County % Uninsured Rates with Other County Level Measures

 

Overall Health System Performance - The Commonwealth Fund

 

 

Lessons from HBO's 'Weight of the Nation'

This past week HBO debuted a four part documentary called The Weight of the Nation on the obesity epidemic in the US.  The clip above from part four talks about how geography can have a big effect on one's health due to the socioeconomic factors which surround these areas.  The fourth episode which deals with public health challenges can be seen below and is relevant to much of the research I have been doing for PUSH-Healthcare for All PA on Pennsylvania's uninsured.  The episode can be seen below.  All four parts can be seen at the above link in italics.  I'll review this episode in particular.

The program does a good job of presenting the data and issues related to the obesity epidemic in the US.  The impacts of their actions, intentional or not, are discussed at length including those on health care costs.  Various solutions to the problem are discussed such as ending farm subsidies, creating more park space in inner city areas such as Philadelphia County, and adding more bike trails.  While all of these are good things which I fully support, how much does the obesity epidemic really contribute to the high cost of health?  According to The Incidental Economist only around $25 billion in extra health care spending in 2004 can be attributed to health problems related to obesity because other non obesity related diseases such as prostate cancer are just as prevalent in the US relative to other countries with universal care such as Japan, Germany and the UK as can be seen in the graph below.  Diseases below the horizontal line in the graph such as Hepatitis B and Bladder Cancer are more prevalent in those countries.  You can see more cost analysis at this page.

In the opening credits of the episode above we can see that one of the sponsors of this documentary is Kaiser Permanente which was skewered for its profiteering practices in the film Sicko by Michael Moore.  The practices of the health insurance, pharmaceutical, and agribusiness industries to maximize profits often overlap.  I credit the filmmakers for skewering the food industry.  Is the Kaiser Permanente using this documentary to distract individuals from their own practices?  Congress only turned on the tobacco industry when the costs to the health care system became clear.

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Unbelievable Promises Monopolized Care—UPMC

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Scott Tyson to be in IUP Panel

Scott Tyson (in video), President of the Education Fund of Healthcare 4 All PA, will speak at an Indiana County Social Change panel this Saturday at IUP accompanied by boardmember Bob Mason.  Details are below.  This is PUSH's 50th post.

INDIANA COUNTY (13.7% uninsured)
CENTER FOR
COMMUNITY GROWTH
Building Change in Indiana County:
Saturday, April 28, 2012
IUP: Keith Hall Room 130
10 AM - 4 PM
Join us for a day of discussion, networking, skills building, and envisioning together what it takes to build positive social change in Indiana County and the region.
Discussion topics will include:
*Environmental justice
*Poverty and race
*Voting rights
*Universal Healthcare
*LGBT Equality
*Disability Access
Confirmed organizations: the Coalition for a Healthy County, IC-CAP, Northwest Human Services, Health Care for All PA, IUP Commission on LGBT, IUP Hawkrock, PFLAG, Grantmakers of Western Pennsylvania, and the IndianaVIE.
Email theindianacenter@gmail.com for questions, or find us on Facebook.
Sponsored by the Indiana County Center for Community Growth, the Center for Appalachian Studies, and the
Three Rivers Community Foundation.

Overall Health System Performance - The Commonwealth Fund

The Commonwealth Fund has come out with a studies showing long gaps in health insurance coverage in the US and comparing regional healthcare systems on Access, Avoidable Hospital Use and Costs, Healthy Lives, and Prevention and Treatment.  The regional You can see the full interactive maps and zoom in on Pennsylvania and focus on the various measures that make up the ranking.  The map below shows the breakdown by state. Pennsylvania ranks 15th out of 50 or in the second quartile.  The regional map above shows that there is variation in PA with the central part raking in the top quartile (shown in white), the southwest in the third, and the rest of the state in the second quartile shown in light blue.

Overall Health System Performance - The Commonwealth Fund

**Related Posts**

County Health Rankings

 

Correlating PA County % Uninsured Rates with Other County Level Measures

 

Correlating PA's Uninsured with Sen Pat Toomey's 2010 Vote

 

Questioning Effectiveness

County Health Rankings

While we're all waiting for the Supreme Court to rule on the Affordable Care Act, the 2012 County Health Rankings were released yesterday for all counties in the US.  An interactive map for Pennsylvania can be seen with all of the county rankings for an overall measure that considers morbidity and mortality above.  Ranked first is Union County(abbrev. UN) and last out of 67 counties is Philadelphia (PH).  These counties were the same in 2011.  Both counties were similar in the percent uninsured in 2009, the most recent year Census Bureau estimates are available, with the 2nd and 3rd highest rates in the state as can be seen in the table below.  The graph shows that in 2011 both were below the statewide median household income of $50,702 with Philadelphia having $37,090 and Union having $45,545.  

While overall rankings are interesting and make for interesting press articles such as "Are Philadelphians eating too many cheesesteaks?" they can gloss over important information such as income, the uninsured and gender.  I haven't yet looked at the 2012 data to see how it differs from last years but expect to find more info on how the recession is impacting the health of Pennsylvania.  Union and Philadelphia Counties caught my eye at first glance.  

Teasing apart cause an effect relationships is a lot more difficult.  Uninsured status (and underinsured status which is a lot harder to measure), gender and median household income are just two of the many possible confounding variables on health status.  This does not mean that one should not try to find these relationships.  It's better to rely on raw measures like the ones below than constructed ones like in the map above for these relationships.

Top 10 County Uninsured Rates in 2009 Overall & by Gender

**Related Posts**

Racial and Gender Differences in Pennsylvania's Uninsured 

 

Correlating PA County % Uninsured Rates with Other County Level Measures

 

Correlating PA's Uninsured with Sen Pat Toomey's 2010 Vote