Texas’ uninsured rate falls, but still leads nation

Several sources, including officials with the Obama administration, have released figures in the past two years showing steep drops in the number of uninsured, but none is considered as reliable as the Census data.

While dramatic and in sharp contrast to the six prior years when coverage rates were relatively stable, last year’s steep fall in the number and percentage of the uninsured was not unexpected. Nationally, the child poverty rate in 2014 was 21.7 percent, down from 22.2 percent the year before, but unchanged from 2010.

Almost 4 in 10 people in Detroit live in poverty, according to numbers released by the U.S. Census Bureau Wednesday, making it the most impoverished big city in the U.S.

The drop in Kansas was not as large as the national average. Whites enjoy the highest rate of coverage at 92.4 percent, compared to 88.2 percent for blacks and 90.7 percent for Asians.

The news comes as the state’s unemployment rate dipped this week as well, to 5.1%, the lowest level since 2001.

In general, states that did not expand Medicaid eligibility, like Kansas, had higher uninsured rates than states with Medicaid expansion.

The Bureau reported that the number of people in Washington State who were without health insurance has been cut by about 3,17,000 since 2014.

Meanwhile, wages continued a long stagnation, with the median household income remaining at $53,657, effectively the same, after being adjusted for inflation, as the year before, showing why so many Americans feel that they have not experienced any improvement in their economic prospects. That survey counts people as uninsured only if they have gone without health coverage for the entire year.

One of the most notable changes from 2013 to 2014 was the rate of health insurance coverage among states. That’s down from 8.2 percent the year before.

A new report based on Census data estimates that 8.8 million Americans gained health insurance in 2014. That was down from 19.5 percent in 2013 but still greater than the 15.6 percent registered in 2009, the Census Bureau said.

The new data also shows that roughly a third of the city’s population (33 percent) receives some kind of public assistance.