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Janet Firshein or Joe Sutherland at 301/652-1558

FOR RELEASE WITH A.M. PAPERS ON

FRIDAY, JANUARY 30, 2004

NATIONAL REPORT PRAISES IOWA FOR

SUCCESS IN KEEPING UNINSURED POPULATION LOW

WASHINGTON, D.C. (January 30, 2004) – An assessment of health care in the 50 states, released here today, shows Iowa as one of the states with the lowest percentages of uninsured adults, at 11.7 percent of the under 65 adult population. Only Minnesota and Delaware have lower rates. By contrast, California has 23 percent uninsured; Illinois has over 17 percent; and even neighboring Wisconsin--which itself is a leader in this area--has 12 percent. The report appears in the February 2004 issue of Governing magazine.

“To be entirely fair, Iowa’s task may be a little easier than in some other states,” said Katherine Barrett, co-author of the report, “because it has a relatively large population of senior citizens and most of them are covered by Medicare. But the state is also doing an excellent job at keeping its rate of uninsured children low, and there is no obvious demographic reason for that.”

Iowa has the fourth-lowest percentage of uninsured children in the country, the report notes, and this is largely because of thorough efforts to make sure that parents are aware that benefits are offered through public insurance programs. Other states, in tight economic times, have cut back substantially on this kind of outreach.

On the negative side, Iowa lags behind other states in shifting Medicaid long-term care spending away from institutional care and toward community and home based care for the elderly and disabled. Iowa has a high percentage of its older population in nursing homes, relative to other states. Nearly 81 percent of its long-term spending goes to institutional care. By contrast, Minnesota spends only 51 percent of its long-term care dollars on institutions.

Governing’s analysis of state-funded health care is part of the Government Performance Project, a six-year-old effort, funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, to evaluate a wide range of state government management and policy functions. This year’s special report focuses on six critical health care problems facing states: long-term care, public health, mental health, prescription drugs, access to care for the uninsured, and care for children.

The Government Performance Project found and documented the inability of the 50 states’ health care system to deliver improvements in medicine fairly and consistently to many of their citizens. Health care in most states is not just inadequate, the study concluded--it’s deteriorating. “After exhaustive analysis and hundreds of interviews,” says Peter Harkness, Governing’s publisher and editor, “it became clear that there is a health care crisis in America. But it is in no way a medical crisis. It is a fiscal crisis.”

Governing is a policy and management magazine aimed at high-level state and local government officials. An online version of this report will be available at http://www.governing.com/gpp/2004/intro.htm as of January 29. Press releases for each of the 50 states can be found at http://www.governing.com/gpp/2004/press.htm.

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