Georgia Health Insurance

State Rankings

The story of Georgia healthcare mirrors that of many other Southern states. A low prevalence of binge drinking, high rates of smoking and obesity, high rates of uninsured residents, and low graduation rates all combine to make healthcare in Georgia more expensive than it should be. While binge drinking is very low at only 11.5% of the population, 17.6% of Georgians still smoke, while 30.4% of Georgians are considered obese, an increase of nearly 900,000 from a decade ago. Air pollution in Georgia is also very high. Georgia is ranked 46th in air quality, which may explain a similarly high rate of cardiovascular deaths when combined with the high percentage of smokers in the state. Worryingly, the percentage of children in poverty has also increased in the past decade, up to nearly 25% from 16.4%. Unitedhealthcare cites some of Georgia's biggest healthcare challenges to be overcoming its low high school graduation rates and fighting its high rate of uninsured residents. If Georgia can better those statistics, it may bode well for the future of Georgia healthcare.

Georgia Healthcare

While the percentage of those without insurance in Georgia is above the national average at 19%, the state also has proportionally lower numbers of residents on Medicaid and Medicare, which may partially explain Georgia's below average public health expenditures, according to statistics provided by the Kaiser Foundation. If healthcare in Georgia is to improve, the state must take steps to reduce air pollution, which will go a long way towards improving overall health in the state. Still, Georgia has several health insurance programs that received high scores in the 2011 NCQA survey: