According to the Virginia Health Care Foundation's Profile of the Uninsured, approximately 1 million Virginians (15.5%) lack health insurance coverage -- one in five Virginia adults and one in 11 Virginia children.
Who these uninsured Virginians are may surprise you:
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They are employed: The vast majority of the uninsured live in households with at least one full-time (70%) or part-time (12%) worker.
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They work for small companies: 61% of uninsured Virginians live in working households witha self-employed worker or a worker employed by a company with fewer than 100 employees. |
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Their employers don't offer health insurance: Only one in four uninsured Virginians (26.8%) live in households that have an offer of employer-sponsored health insurance. |
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They are low income: The majority of Virginia's uninsured are low income. People with incomes below the Federal Poverty Level ($19,971 for a family of four) are nearly six times as likely to be uninsured as people at higher income levels (above 300% of FPL). |
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They are U.S. citizens: The overwhelming majority of Virginians without insurance are U.S. citizens (82.7%).
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Their children may be eligible for insurance: 100,000 uninsured Virginia children are potentially eligible for one of the state sponsored health insurance programs for children. (+/- 4% margin of error) |
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They are ethnically diverse: 49% are white, 25% are African-American, 19% are Hispanic, and 7% classified themselves as "other."
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What is the impact of being uninsured?
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They do not receive the care they need: Low income uninsured adults in Virginia are much less likely than low-income insured adults to receive care or to have a usual source for health care, and are more likely to have unmet health needs. (Source: Virginia Health Care Insurance and Access/VHCIAS, 2004)
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Their medical needs are unmet: Almost 60 percent of low-income uninsured adults had an unmet need for care in the last year because of the financial difficulty of paying for health care. |
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Their children fare more poorly: Uninsured children fare worse than insured children on medical care use measures. Just over 27 percent of uninsured children had no medical care in the previous 12 months compared to 10 percent of insured children. (Source: The State of Kids' Coverage, SHADAC, 2006) |
The Profile of the Uninsured in Virginia was prepared for the Virginia Health Care Foundation by the Urban Institute and was released in January 2007. See the Profile of the Uninsured Power Point presentation. The 2007 Profile of the Uninsured is a follow-up to VHCF’s 2001 Health Access Survey 
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