The U.S. Census Bureau released a report Monday revealing that Wisconsin has one of the lowest rates of people without health insurance in the country.
The report, consisting of data from 2008, said that Wisconsin had 9 percent uninsured last year.
The Census Bureau website lists the rates as three-year averages from 2006-2008. Over that period, the national average rate of uninsured is 15.5 percent, while Wisconsin's rate is only 8.9 percent, the fourth lowest in the country. Only Minnesota, Hawaii and Massachusetts have lower rates.
Rep. Kelda Helen Roys, D-Madison, vice chair of the Assembly Committee on Health and Health Care Reform, is pleased with those numbers.
According to Roys, Wisconsin is a pioneer in health-care expansion, and there are many reasons why the state has such a low rate.
""I think one of the most important things that we can point to is our children's health-insurance program. We have one of the best in the country,"" she said.
Roys also pointed to BadgerCare, a program for low-income families, and a new version called BadgerCare Core Plus for low-income, childless adults.
Wisconsin provides more access to health care outside federal programs because ""you can be pretty poor and still not qualify,"" Roys said.
According to Roys, reforms have been passed in the legislature to protect consumers, such as prohibiting insurance companies from looking at someone's entire medical history and using a pre-existing condition as basis to cancel coverage after he or she gets sick.
However, Roys said more policies still need to be enacted to increase coverage even more.
She said both better use of electronic medical records and giving people with chronic diseases the resources to better manage those diseases on their own are needed reforms.
""Even 9, 10 percent in Wisconsin, you're still talking about half a million [uninsured] people, and that's just a huge number,"" Roys said. ""There's no excuse for that in an industrialized nation.""
