Arizona Health Insurance

State Rankings

Like most Western states, Arizona is torn between very poor and very strong statistical measures for important healthcare determinants. For example, its rankings for behavior-related statistics are excellent. Arizona has the fourth lowest smoking rate at only 13.5% of state residents, obesity is 10th lowest, and binge drinking and preventable hospitalizations are both low.

However, those positives are outweighed by many more prominent and important negative healthcare measures. Currently, Arizona falls in the bottom ten of all states in high school graduation rate, number of children in poverty, number of uninsured residents, public health funding, prenatal care, and primary care physicians.

Having healthy behaviors goes a long way towards your overall health, but if someone can’t get access to a doctor, or does not have health insurance nor the necessary education to deal with a healthcare situation, healthcare in Arizona suffers.

Arizona Healthcare

Although Arizona is a fairly high populated state, particularly in the Phoenix metropolitan area, public health funding is worryingly low, especially for a state with high levels of childhood poverty and residents without health insurance. According to the Kaiser Foundation, almost 20% of Arizona residents lack health insurance, which far exceeds the national average of 16%.

To compound this problem, a higher than average percentage of Arizonans do not receive health insurance through an employer. As a result, Arizona ranks poorly in total number of diabetes cases and poor physical health days. Still, Arizona residents have a wide range of healthcare plans that are rated highly by the NCQA: