2nd Opinion: Stats tell tale not good for Texas

Posted: 8/17/07

2nd Opinion: Stats tell tale not good for Texas

By Karen Wood

Start talking statistics, and my eyes glaze over. I’m already yawning, just thinking about percentages and number signs.

But smack dab in the middle of some great reading recently, out popped some statistics. For once, I didn’t snooze. I got scared—the kind of scared with goose bumps and shivers running up and down the spine.

Right there, plain as day: “Texas, at 23.8 percent, had a higher percentage of (health) uninsured citizens than any other state in 2006.”

Might as well round that up to 24 percent. I do better with whole numbers.

That compares to 14.6 percent nationally, or 43.6 million who didn’t have health insurance last year from sea to shining sea.

Shorthand: Nation, 15 percent uninsured. Texas, 24 percent uninsured. Not good, Texas.

Understand I’m a native Texan, so I’m not one to knock the Great State.

Indeed, when I saw those stats comparing us to the rest of the country, I was sure it couldn’t be right. After all, we are bigger, better, stronger, higher, deeper, wider.

Well, pretty much nobody has anything on us. Especially attitude.

Except health insurance. What happened?

As I looked further, the stats got worse. Like the one on uninsured kids. From Pacific to Atlantic: 9.3 percent. In Texas? 19 percent. Not good, Texas.

Just who are these people trying to trash the GreatStateofTexas (Always one word. Just listen to the politicians)? Why, it’s none other than the people at the National Center for Health Statistics.

Its website (www.cdc.gov/nchs) breaks down all of the gory details—pie charts and graphs and footnotes and sub-sections and details too spooky for me to handle without digging out my whiffle dust to ward off the nightmares.

I was prepared to challenge the National Center for Health Statistics. Surely it was relying on too small a sample. But, no. This survey was based on 100,000 interviews.

As for the ranks of Texas’ uninsured: Even larger numbers were uninsured at some time or another during the last 12 months prior to the survey. And a portion of those surveyed had gone without health insurance for more than a year at the time the survey was done.

Why, shucks. 100,000. That’s a pretty big number, even for a native Texan. No matter how big I yawn, I can’t get 100,000 in my mouth. No matter how much my eyes glaze over, I can’t get 24 percent and 19 percent out of my mind’s eye.

The GreatStateofTexas has people smart enough to fix the problem. The GreatStateofTexas has the resources to fix the problem.

We just need to hitch up our britches, tighten our Lone Star belt buckles and do it.

Karen Wood is a freelance writer living in Waco. She formerly worked for Woman’s Missionary Union and Baylor University.