A spot of bad news: a recently released report (pdf)from Washington state’s Office of Financial Management finds that the share of Washingtonians without health insurance rose last year. Roughly one in ten Washingtonians (9.5 percent) went without health insurance in 2004, up from 8.4 percent in 2002.
Not surprisingly, poor people are the most likely to be without coverage. One in five state residents below the federal poverty line has no health insurance. (In 2004, the poverty line was $18,850 for a family of four, or $9,310 for a single person.)
Kids do slightly better than the average: only 6 percent of the state’s children are without health coverage. But that’s still far more than in, say, British Columbia, where no kids are uninsured.
