Where the Uninsured Live

Now that the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld the Affordable Care Act, it's worth taking another look at a visual representation of the millions of Americans who still lack health insurance. A few months back, our own Richard Florida broke down the geography of America's uninsured, noting the "uninsured belt” he saw running through much of the South and the Sunbelt.

Nationwide, 17.1 percent of Americans lacked health insurance in 2011, according to the Gallup Healthways Well-Being Index, which also produced the map below. But there are stark differences between the states. More than one in five people are uninsured in roughly a dozen states, starting with Texas (27.6 percent), Mississippi (23.5 percent), Florida (22.9 percent), Oklahoma (22.1 percent), California (22.0 percent), and Nevada (21.9 percent). Compare those figures with Massachusetts, which boasts the lowest rate of uninsured people in the nation, at less than five percent. Massachusetts, of course, already has an individual mandate thanks to the health-care reform efforts of former governor Mitt Romney.