To evaluate health care in the United States, MoneyGeek looked at three categories of data that together create a comprehensive view of the overall quality of health care in each location. Those categories include:
- Health outcomes, including indicators such as rates of disease and risk factors such as obesity and smoking, preventable deaths and infant mortality. These measures help answer the question: How healthy are the people who live here?
- Cost, including factors like how much the state spends on health care and the average cost of private health insurance. These measures help answer the question: How expensive is health care in this country?
- Access, including data on the number of primary care providers and hospital beds available, how many people are uninsured and how many people need care but have difficulty getting it. These indicators help answer the question: How easy is it to get the health care you need in this country?
Within these three categories, we broke down the best and the worst states across a wide range of health care outcomes, costs and access data points. Below is a brief summary of those findings, along with the top best and worst states for each data point.
Deep Blue States Across the US Have the Healthiest Residents
- Best States for Health Outcomes:
1. Hawaii
2.Vermont
3.California
4. Massachusetts
5. New York
- Worst States for Health Outcomes:
1.West Virginia
2. Mississippi
3. Louisiana
4. Tennessee
5.Kentucky
Southern States Have Highest Diabetes Mortality Rates
- States With Fewest Diabetes Mortalities per 100,000 Residents:
1. Hawaii: 17.0
2. Massachusetts: 17.2
3. Connecticut: 17.5
4.Vermont: 17.5
5. Colorado: 18.0
- States With Most Diabetes Mortality per 100,000 Residents:
50. West Virginia: 41.3
49. Mississippi: 41.0
48. Arkansas: 33.8
47. Louisiana: 33.1
46. Oklahoma: 32.8
West Virginia’s Preventable Death Rate Is Nearly Three Times Texas’s
- States With the Lowest Rates of Preventable Deaths per 100,000 Residents:
1. Texas: 44.0
2. Utah: 45.0
3. New York: 45.3
4. Hawaii: 46.5
5. Nebraska: 46.6
- States With the Highest Rates of Preventable Deaths per 100,000 Residents:
50. West Virginia: 125.6
49. Tennessee: 88.7
48. Kentucky: 88.2
47. New Mexico: 88.0
46. Maine: 85.1
Northeast States Have Two Times the Primary Care Providers of Western States
- States With the Most Primary Care Providers per 100,000 Residents:
1. Rhode Island: 255.1
2. Massachusetts: 227.7
3. New York: 207.4
4. Connecticut: 197.8
5. Pennsylvania: 197.0
- States With the Fewest Primary Care Providers per 100,000 Residents:
50. Utah: 98.7
49. Idaho: 99.2
48. Nevada: 101.6
47. Texas: 109.0
46. Montana: 110.3