Health insurance and Hispanics in Massachusetts

Racial and ethnic disparities in health care and insurance is no where near my expertise. But I have questions, such as, “Why are so many Hispanics uninsured in Massachusetts (or Boston, really)?”

Witness results from the Boston Area Community Health (BACH) survey, as presented by John McKinlay and Carol Link at this year’s AcademyHealth Annual Research Meeting. The BACH is a survey of a representative sample of Boston residents ages 30-79. (In the figure below, region between each adjacent pair of vertical bars is 20 percentage points.)

MA HI by race-eth

The bars illustrate how health insurance coverage changed with health reform in Massachusetts. Though Hispanics experienced the greatest gains in coverage (15.3 percentage points), they are still the group least likely to be covered (10.9% uninsured). Why?

Hidden information below

Austin Frakt

Austin Frakt, PhD, is co-Editor-in-Chief of The Incidental Economist. His day job is Associate Director of the Partnered Evidence-based Policy Resource Center at the Boston VA Healthcare System, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. He is also a Professor with the Department of Health Law, Policy and Management at the Boston University’s School of Public Health, a Principal Research Scientist with the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Health Services Research.

The Incidental Economist

the health services research blog

Editors In Chief
Managing Editor

Work posted here under copyright © of the authors • Details on the Site Policies page

Subscribe

Email Address*