
The University of New Mexico
NEWS RELEASE
Contact: Carolyn Gonzales 277-5920
cgonzal@unm.edu
Oct. 24, 2007
Disparities in Health Insurance Coverage Focus of UNM Lecture
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Center for Health Policy at UNM hosts “Explaining State-Level Differences in Minority Citizens’ Health Insurance Coverage,” a lecture by Florida State University Professor Charles Barrilleaux, on Thursday, Nov. 8, 12:30-1:45 p.m.in the Anthropology Building, Room 178.
The lecture is free and open to the public. Parking permits for off-campus visitors are available by calling the RWJF Center at 277-0130.
Barrilleaux is LeRoy Collins Professor of Political Science at Florida State University, where he is also an associate of the DeVoe Moore Center for the Study of Critical Issues in Economics and Government, an associate of the Mildred and Claude Pepper Center for Aging and Public Policy. His health care research focuses on issues of access to care, state health policymaking, and problems of uninsurance.
According to Barrilleaux, most people recognize health insurance coverage as an important component of economic and personal security. “To the extent that ethnic and racial groups are at greater risk of being uninsured, those groups’ ability to succeed and participate fully in US society is hampered,” Barrilleaux said.
Nearly 45 million Americans were without health insurance of any kind during 2005. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, the rate of uninsurance in the US varies greatly by race, with about 12 percent of whites, 20 percent of African-Americans, 34 percent of Hispanics, and 18 percent of persons categorized as “other” race being uninsured. Variations are more pronounced among the states, rising as high as 55 percent among Hispanics in Tennessee and 27 percent among blacks in Florida.
Barrilleaux said he plans to discuss sources of variation in state-level rates of uninsurance among groups and point to plausible policy solutions to the problem.
“The wide variation among states, some of which are straining their budgets to pay for Medicaid and other health programs, suggests that the popular strategy of relying on the states as a solution to the health coverage problem may be flawed,” he said.
Barrilleaux received his PhD in political science from State University of New York, Binghamton in 1984 and completed post-doctoral training in health care finance as a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Faculty Fellow at Johns Hopkins University in 1986-1987. In addition to Florida State University, he has been on the faculty at the University of New Orleans and worked as a policy analyst for the New York state Medicaid agency.
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