Ohio Bucks National Trend in Health Insurance Coverage

Plain Dealer, Cleveland
Diane Suchetka
August 29, 2007

Every day last year, 6,000 people joined the long list of Americans without health insurance. And nearly 2,000 of them were children. The census bureau announced those numbers Tuesday, along with its annual poverty statistics and this explanation: Fewer Americans are getting health insurance from their employers. That dropped from 60.2 percent in 2005 to 59.7 percent in 2006.

However, Ohio, for once, wasn't part of the bad news. More of us in the Buckeye State were insured in 2006 than were the year before, giving Ohio one of the better health-insurance rates in the country. "We still have a lot of employee-based health insurance compared to a lot of the rest of the country," explained J.B. Silvers, a professor of health systems management at Case Western Reserve University's Weatherhead School. "Large organizations tend to offer insurance. And we have a lot of large manufacturing companies, a lot of government employees, a lot of university employees."

Another explanation for Ohio's low rate -- only 10.1 percent of us were without health insurance last year compared to 15.8 percent of Americans -- is its aging population. Nearly everyone in Ohio who's 65 or older is covered by Medicare or private insurance. "And Ohio has done a very good job of insuring kids," said Jason Sanford, spokesman for the nonprofit, nonpartisan Health Policy Institute of Ohio. "We have a very low rate of uninsured kids."

Ohio has done that through SCHIP, the State Children's Health Insurance Program, called Healthy Start. That program provides health insurance to low-income children whose families earn too much to qualify for Medicaid, but can't afford private insurance.

"There is still a very large problem in the state," Sanford said. Last year, 1.1 million Ohioans -- 157,000 of them children -- went without health insurance. They spent $3.5 billion of their own money and donations from charity last year to pay doctor and hospital bills. And that only met half their needs, Sanford said. What's worse, Sanford said, is that they cost the state $2.1 billion to $5.8 billion in lost productivity.

There's more good news for Ohio, though. Lawmakers approved a budget in June that expands health care insurance to children whose families earn 200 to 300 percent of the federal poverty level. And the governor hopes to have a health care exchange in place by early next year. Under that plan, Ohio would pool the state's uninsured population and negotiate with insurers for a less-expensive group rate for them.