Daily Yonder takes closer look at rural uninsured, finds wide ranges across counties, states, regions

How will health-care reform affect rural Americans without health insurance? While rural counties have a slightly lower rate of uninsured than urban counties, new data from the Census Bureau shows that statistic can be misleading for most areas, Bill Bishop and Roberto Gallardo report for the Daily Yonder. In all rural counties, 17.1 percent of people under 65 don't have insurance, compared to 17.2 percent in urban counties, but the rate of uninsured within rural America varies widely across states and regions, the Yonder reports.

Just under half of the nation's 2,038 rural counties have uninsured rates below the national average of 17.1 percent, but "In most states, the rural uninsured rate is higher than the urban rate," the Yonder reports. All but seven of the 50 counties with the highest rates of uninsured people are found in Texas, Bishop and Gallardo write. "Rural counties have lower rates of uninsured only in Arizona, California, Illinois, Nevada, South Carolina, Texas and Connecticut." (Read more) (Yonder map; click for larger version)