Neighbor isles have lower rate of health insurance coverage
POSTED: Thursday, October 09, 2008
A new Census Bureau report shows the neighbor islands have lower rates of health insurance coverage than Oahu.
The number of uninsured is highest on Oahu, which has the largest population. But the percentage of people without insurance is higher on the neighbor islands, with Kauai having the greatest percentage of uninsured - 12.6 percent of the population under 65.
Dr. Kenneth Fink, the head of the Med-Quest Division of the state Department of Health and Human Services, said the state has the lowest percentage of uninsured in the nation.
But he said he doesn't have enough information to know why there is a difference in the uninsured rate between counties.
The census report shows that people at or near the poverty level have a higher rate of health insurance coverage than the general population. But even among that group - those who make no more than 250 percent of poverty-level incomes, health insurance coverage is higher on Oahu than the neighbor islands. The 2005 poverty level for a family of four in Hawaii was $22,260.
Many of those residents are eligible for the state's Med-Quest insurance program.
Fink and Human Services Department spokesman Alan Eyerly said there is a gap group of working poor who do not get insurance through their employer and do not qualify for state insurance benefits.
Fink said it might be that there are more people in the gap group who live on the neighbor islands. But he emphasized that there is not enough information to know if that is the case.
The department, he said, only keeps track of the Medicaid-eligible population and not of those covered by private insurance.
Eyerly said the department has been hiring more outreach workers statewide to let people know about the state's Med-Quest program since 2004.
The census report is based on an analysis of 2005 data.
Living without a health net in Hawaii
The number and percentage of people under 65 in each county who did not have health insurance in 2005:
| NO. OF UNINSURED | PERCENTAGE | |
| Kauai | 6,714 | 12.6 |
| Maui County | 14,287 | 11.6 |
| Big Island | 16,615 | 11.4 |
| Honolulu | 66,488 | 8.9 |
Source: U.S. Census Bureau
