Georgia State Rankings

Like most of its southern neighbors, Georgia has had a consistently poor showing in the yearly United Healthcare rankings of overall state health, coming in as the 37th healthiest state in the current edition. Georgia has several very strong rankings in a few important categories; unfortunately, these are negated by poor rankings in several other critical areas. For example, Georgia has very few instances of binge drinking and high childhood immunization coverage, both of which are excellent determinants of health. Unfortunately, those few high rankings are outweighed by many more poor rankings. Georgia is in the bottom ten in high school graduation rates, infectious disease rates, children in poverty, and air pollution. The state ranks poorly in the number of primary care physicians and incidents of violent crime as well.

Georgia Healthcare

One of the biggest weaknesses in Georgia healthcare is the lack of public health funding, which may contribute to a large number of smokers and high diabetes and obesity rates. This lack of public health funding is made worse by the alarmingly high percentage of Georgians without health insurance. For 2011, the Kaiser Health Foundation estimates that 20% of state residents are without health insurance, which is a problem when the state unemployment rate is two points higher than the national rate and the median household income is a full five thousand dollars lower than the national average. Still, Georgia residents have access to a wide range of healthcare plans that are highly rated by the NCQA: