Health insurance lags most in Southwest, CDC says

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New England with a rate of uninsured people less than half that of the Southwest has the largest proportion of its population covered, the study found.

The study marks the first time the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has compared different regions of the country by health insurance status, said Robin Cohen, the lead researcher.

Cohen declined to theorize why Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and Oklahoma together have higher rates of uninsured people than other parts of the country.

But another expert said it likely comes from a combination of factors, including state policy decisions and the fact that many jobs in the Southwest are service, construction or other jobs without good health benefits.

Aggressive steps by states such as Massachusetts to increase coverage of their uninsured may widen the gap between regions like New England and the Southwest, said the expert, Ken Thorpe of Atlanta's Emory University.

"There are substantial inequities in coverage depending where you live, and they seem to be getting worse," said Thorpe, a health policy researcher.

The CDC study's results are based on a national, in-person household survey of more than 106,000 families in 2004 through 2006.

The researchers focused on non-institutionalized people under the age of 65, the age when Medicare insurance for the elderly kicks in.

The study presented estimates for the 41 states that had at least 1,000 respondents. But the researchers pooled data from the other states as well to come up with regional estimates.

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