Tuesday, Aug. 30, 2005 | 11:03 a.m.
SUN STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS
Nevada ranked No. 4 nationwide for residents without health insurance over the three-year period from 2002 to 2004, according to new Census Bureau data -- even as the state showed relatively high income and low poverty figures.
The report, based on surveys done earlier this year, showed that 19.1 percent of the state's residents didn't have health insurance.
Only Texas, New Mexico and Oklahoma had higher percentages of uninsured residents. In Texas, the figure was 25.1 percent.
Several local experts said the reasons for the apparent gap -- high income versus low levels of health insurance -- range from flawed Medicaid programs to a large number of people working two or more part-time jobs or jobs such as those in the service sector that take some time for insurance to take hold.
Nevada had an average poverty rate of 10.2 percent during the three-year period from 2002 to 2004, notably below the national average of 12.7 percent. The federal level of poverty in 2004 is $19,157 for a family of four with two children.
And the state's median household income was 16th highest in the nation at $46,984, above the national average of $44,473.
Mike Willden, director of the state department of human resources, which oversees the state health division, said that one of the reasons so many in the state lack health insurance is that the state has historically dedicated little money to Medicaid.
About half the state's Medicaid budget comes from state coffers; the other half comes from the federal government.
Willden said about 6.4 percent of the state population, or about 178,000 people, use Medicaid, well below the national average of 12.9 percent.
"We need more programs to get people into Medicaid and ... our eligibility threshold is much higher than other states," he said. As well, he said, Nevada needs to put more money into the program.
Nationwide, the poverty rate rose from 12.5 percent in 2003 to 12.7 percent of the population last year, the fourth consecutive annual increase, the Census Bureau reported.
Overall, there were 37 million people living in poverty, up 1.1 million people from 2003.
Asians were the only ethnic group to show a decline in poverty -- from 11.8 percent in 2003 to 9.8 percent last year. The poverty rate among the elderly declined as well, from 10.2 percent in 2003 to 9.8 percent last year.
The last decline in overall poverty was in 2000, when 31.1 million people lived under the threshold -- 11.3 percent of the population.
The number of people without health insurance grew from 45 million to 45.8 million. At the same time, the number of people with health insurance coverage grew by 2 million last year.
The median household income, meanwhile, stood at $44,389, unchanged from 2003. Among racial and ethnic groups blacks had the lowest median income and Asians the highest. Median income refers to the point at which half of households earn more and half earn less.
Regionally, income declined only in the Midwest, down 2.8 percent to $44,657. The South was the poorest region and the Northeast and the West had the highest median incomes.
The increase in poverty came despite strong economic growth, which helped create 2.2 million jobs last year.
Sheldon Danziger, co-director of the National Poverty Center at the University of Michigan, said the poverty number is still much better than the 80s and early 90s.
"The good news is that poverty is a lot lower than it was in 1993, but we went through a hell of an economic boom," Danziger said. "Nobody is predicting we're going to go through another economic boom like that."
Sun Washington
Bureau Chief Benjamin Grove, reporter Timothy Pratt and the Associated Press contributed to this story.
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