Texas is the 11th-worst state in the country for health care, according to a new survey from WalletHub, a credit score/credit report/financial advice website owned by Evolution Finance Inc. and based in Washington, D.C.
The report, titled “2017’s Best and Worst States for Health Care,” by Richie Bernardo, notes that the average American spends nearly $10,000 a year on personal health care, according to estimates from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. That figure is expected to continue to increase over time.
But, Bernardo’s report adds, “higher costs don’t necessarily translate to better results.” He quotes a report from the Kaiser Family Foundation that shows the U.S. continues to be out-performed by several other nations in areas of health coverage, life expectancy and disease burden (measuring longevity and quality of life).
Still, our country has progressed in some areas, especiall “it’s ability to promote health and provide high quality care, with some recent improvement in the accessibility of that care and a slowing of spending growth.”
(That last, obviously, was before Trump was inaugurated and he and Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan launched their all-out war against the Affordable Care Act.)
Bernardo said the WalletHub report compares the 50 states and the District of Columbia across 35 measures of cost, accessibility and outcome. You can read the full report here, but let’s look at some of the stats on Texas (This is out of the 50 states and D.C., with 1 equaling the best, and 25 denoting “average”):
- Texas is 27th in hospital beds per capita.
- 43rd in physicians per capita.
- 31st in dentists per capita.
- 43rd in physician Medicare-acceptance rate.
- 51st (that’s dead last) in the percentage of insured adults ages 18-64.
- 49th in the percentage of insured children ages 0-17 (only Alaska and Nevada are worse).
- 28th in the percentage of at-risk adults with no routine doctor visit in the past two years.
- 47th in the percentage of adults with no dental visit in the past year.
Texas ranked 47th overall, 44th in costs, 51st (again, dead last) in access and 30th in outcomes.
