Texas leads nation in share of people lacking health insurance

Texas has the country's largest share of Americans under 65 without health insurance, according to new Census Bureau data.

Why it matters: Nearly 19% of Texans are uninsured as of 2022. It's a big improvement over 2006, when 27.6% of Texans were uninsured — but still nearly double the national uninsured rate of 9.5%.

The big picture: The uninsured rate fell in 627 U.S. counties and increased in only 23 between 2021 and 2022 — meaning Americans are trending toward being covered rather than not.

Yes, but: More recent preliminary data shows an uptick in the overall uninsured rate as states cut Medicaid rolls and unemployment rises, Axios' Maya Goldman reports .

• Texas, for example, has removed more than 2 million people from its Medicaid program since April 2023, mostly for procedural reasons.

Zoom in: Collin (10.6%), Denton (11.5%) and Rockwall (11.2%) counties have some of the lowest percentages of uninsured Texans.

• In Dallas County, more than 528,000 residents are uninsured, or 23.6% of the population.
• In Tarrant County, more than 337,000 residents are uninsured, or 18.2%.

Stunning stat: Around 232,000 Hidalgo County residents along the Mexico-U.S. border don't have insurance. That's 30.2% of that county's population — the highest percentage of a populous county in the state.

Zoom out: After Texas, Oklahoma (14.3%), Wyoming (14.1%) and Florida (13.9%) have the highest share of uninsured residents among U.S. states and Washington, D.C.

• Texas, Wyoming and Florida are also among the small group of holdouts that never adopted Obamacare's Medicaid expansion.
• Massachusetts (2.9%), Washington, D.C. (3.1%) and Hawai'i (4.3%) have the lowest.

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