A January 2021 survey from GoodRx revealed that 13% of the U.S. population is uninsured for health coverage. This is up from 2019 when the survey showed the nationwide uninsured rate to be 11%. Among those study participants who did have insurance, 34% reported their premiums increasing, and 22% said their copays have gone up as well. "We're not seeing great strides in health care coverage for many Americans," wrote research scientist Sasha Guttentag about the GoodRx study of 1,202 Americans. High costs related to the COVID-19 pandemic have made matters worse for several workers, write Sheldon Whitehouse and Sherrod Brown in an op-ed. They point to a FAIR Health analysis of 30 billion private health care claims, which showed the average charge for a COVID-19 patient requiring an in-patient stay to be an estimated $73,300. That amount drops to $38,221 for an insured patient utilizing in-network services. Since health insurance is regulated at the state level, varying degrees of income and policy support state by state can lead to drastically different coverage rates. A study by AdvisorSmith from early 2021 takes a deep dive into the percentage of residents of all 50 states and the District of Columbia who do (and don't) have insurance. Using data from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey to determine the percentage of the population not covered by health insurance, the study ranked the states by the proportion of their population that was not insured. See the top five most and least insured states in our slideshow above. Related: |

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• The 5 best and worst states for health care in 2020