Number of Georgians without health insurance likely to grow

Private health insurance coverage in Georgia has steadily eroded during this decade, and the state has the sixth-highest number of uninsured people.

And those insurance statistics precede the recession rocking the economy.

A new Georgia State University study, released Thursday, portrays a gloomy health insurance climate in 2007, the latest year these statistics are available. Insurance coverage in Georgia will continue to deteriorate amid the downturn this year and in 2009, experts say.

“We had pretty good economic growth in 2007,” said Bill Custer, director of the Center for Health Services Research at GSU. “This is the best the decade has to offer. We’d expect these numbers to be dramatically worse now.”

The report notes that the level of uninsured in Georgia in 2007 stayed roughly the same as the previous year, at 20 percent of Georgians under age 65.

The percentage of those under 65 with private coverage, though, has dropped from 75 percent in 2000 and 2001 — a two-year average, to increase the statistical accuracy — to 67 percent in 2006 and 2007, mirroring a national trend.

Meanwhile, the share of Georgians with public Medicaid and PeachCare coverage has increased, according to the report, which used U.S. Census data and an independent survey commissioned by the state Department of Community Health.

Georgia’s jobless rate is 7 percent, up from 4.4 percent in fall 2007. The state has shed about 61,000 jobs in the past 12 months.

“This will probably turn out to be the deepest, most broad-based recession since the Depression,” said senior economist Mark Vitner of the Wachovia Economics Group. “This is already far worse than what we saw in 2001.”

About 4.5 percent of the jobs in metro Atlanta — roughly 100,000 positions — will be lost before things turn around, and that likely will not happen until most of the way through 2010, he said.

People losing jobs often lose health insurance as well.

During the past few months, hospitals and doctors across the state have reported a spike in the number of patients seeking care who have no insurance. The Georgia Free Clinic Network, which provides services to people without insurance, says there has been a 25 percent to 30 percent increase in clinic patients since the same period last year.

Lee Goodwin, 53, who has diabetes and other chronic medical problems, receives care from Hands of Hope Clinic in Stockbridge. Goodwin moved to Henry County after losing his consulting job in Detroit earlier this year.

“A lot of people like myself will need services in free clinics,” he said. “It’s all the result of businesses closing.”

Georgia has 1.6 million people who lack health insurance. A major contributing factor, GSU’s Custer said, is that a large percentage of Georgians work for small businesses. “Small firms are more likely to go out of business,” he said. “If they survive, they’re less likely to offer benefits.”

Residents in rural areas of the state, who are more likely to have low incomes and work for small firms, are more likely to be uninsured than people in urban or suburban areas, the report found.

— Staff writer Michael Kanell contributed to this article.