Poliakoff & Associates, P.A. Advocacy, senior care No Comments

Where are the uninsured?

Axios’ Alex Fitzpatrick and Kavya Beheraj report Texas, Oklahoma, Wyoming and Florida have the highest share of uninsured residents. Three of those four states — Texas, Wyoming and Florida — are among the small group of holdouts that refuse to adopt Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion.

Choropleth map of U.S. counties showing the estimated share of residents who were uninsured in 2022. Overall, 9.5% of Americans were uninsured. States in the South, especially Texas, had more uninsured residents compared to states in the Northeast and Rust Belt. Kenedy County, Texas, had the highest share at 37.7%, while Los Alamos County, N.M., had the lowest at 2.1%.

Data: U.S. Census Bureau; Note: Estimated from administrative and survey data; Map: Kavya Beheraj/Axios

These Republican strongholds do not care about the health and well-being of their neighbors. Shameful.

A study published in the pediatrics journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA Pediatrics) shows that the idea of returning women to roles as wives and mothers by banning abortion has, in Texas, driven infant death rates 12.9% higher. The rest of the country saw an increase of 1.8%.

Infant deaths from congenital anomalies increased 23% in Texas while they decreased for the rest of the nation, showing that the abortion ban is forcing women to carry to term fetuses that could not survive.

When the Texas ban went into effect, Governor Greg Abbott said there was no need to make an exception for rape, because Texas was going to “eliminate all rapists from the streets of Texas.” However, in a study published in JAMA Internal Medicine, researchers estimated that since the Texas ban, 26,313 rape-related pregnancies occurred in the state.