Gore Camp Seizes On Insurance Data
New Census Bureau data showing that Texas has the nation's second-highest rate of uninsured residents is evidence that Gov. George W. Bush has an “alarming disregard” for health care, says Al Gore's campaign.
The agency's report Thursday on health insurance in America showed that 23.3 percent of Texas residents in 1999 were without coverage for the entire year. Only New Mexico was higher at 25.8 percent; nationally, 15.5 percent of all Americans were without health coverage.
In 1998, 24.5 percent of Texans had been uninsured, the highest in the country. The 1999 figure was down slightly from 24.2 percent in 1994, when Bush, the Republican candidate for president, was first elected governor.
Bush spokesman Ken Lisaius defended the Texas record, saying it faced special challenges that other fast-growing border states also deal with. He also said Texas' version of the Child Health Insurance Plan (CHIP) helped families with too much income to qualify for Medicaid but too little income to afford private insurance.
“These new numbers once again show the alarming disregard that George Bush has for the critical issue of health care,” countered Dan Pfeiffer, spokesman for Gore.
When taking into account Texas' high population and “unique circumstance ... certainly under Governor Bush we've made great progress here,” Lisaius said.
Texas historically has had a large number of small business owners and immigrants, segments of the population that have a greater tendency to be without health insurance, said Diane Rowland of the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured.
“Clearly, Texas starts out and has historically had a fairly low rate of insurance but they haven't done as many innovative things as other states” to lower rates of uninsured, she said.
Texas ranked second in the nation in population in 1999, with just over 20 million people. More than 6 million were Hispanic.
Nationally, 33.4 percent of foreign-born residents were uninsured last year, compared with 13.5 percent of U.S-born residents.
State officials also recently announced the enrollment of more than 100,000 children in the CHIP program, and hope to have 428,000 signed up by September 2001.
Gore has proposed expanding CHIP to allow parents to be covered as well, and to offer coverage to people whose incomes now are too high to qualify.
“He will continue to build on this success to ensure all children by 2005,” Pfeiffer said.
Bush has proposed a tax credit of up to $2,000 per family to help low-income working Americans buy health insurance, and an expansion of tax-free medical savings accounts that can be used to pay for health expenses.
Lisaius also noted that the Census Bureau considers two-year averages of state uninsured rates to be a more accurate measure of progress. Using that method, 23.9 percent of exans were uninsured in 1998-99, down from 24.5 percent in 1997-98. Nationally, there was a 0.3 percentage point decline during the same period to 15.9 percent.
The decline in the number of uninsured is “due to the hard work of the people of this country and their efforts” rather than the Clinton administration's policies, Lisaius said.