Where you live may determine what kind of health care you can get — and how much you have to spend to get it. The cost of health insurance varies widely across states. People have more trouble getting health insurance coverage and finding affordable health care options in some places than in others.
To quantify these differences across the U.S. and identify the best and worst states for health care, MoneyGeek analyzed and compiled a wide range of data. We looked at factors like costs — including how expensive health insurance is — and rates of insured and uninsured individuals. MoneyGeek also considered the health of each state’s population based on measures like rates of obesity and smoking, as well as mortality rates from conditions like diabetes. Finally, we analyzed the number of primary care providers and hospital beds and how much difficulty people had getting the care they needed.
The worst states score poorly on some or all of these factors and tend to have some or all of the following distinctions: the least healthy residents, the most expensive private health insurance, the highest proportion of uninsured residents and the most significant shortages of health care providers. The worst states also tend to spend the most on health care overall.
