Census figures find many uninsured in Georgia

By SHELIA M. POOLE and LEON STAFFORD

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Nearly 1 in 4 Georgians of working age is without health insurance, and the numbers are even more dramatic in some of metro Atlanta’s largest counties, according to new figures from the U.S. Census Bureau.

A little more than 29 percent of Clayton County residents of working age — which the bureau defines as anyone ages 18 to 64 — are uninsured, the bureau reports in the numbers being released today.

DeKalb County’s uninsured of working age followed with 28 percent without coverage. Gwinnett has a 26.5 percent population in the category. The number of uninsured of working age in Fulton was 23 percent; in Cobb, it was 19.3 percent. In Georgia, it was 24.6 percent.

Sinobuhle Ndlovu, a certified nursing assistant, doesn’t need the census to tell her how bad things are, she’s living it. Ndlovu hasn’t had health insurance since she moved to this country from Zimbabwe five years ago.

She prays that she and her 19-year-old son won’t have major health problems.

“I am very worried,” said Ndlovu, who lives in Riverdale.

When she needs care, she goes to the West End Medical Center in Atlanta, a federally funded community health center.

“At least there’s a place like this where I can come to,” she said. If she had to go to a hospital, “I’m afraid I wouldn’t know how to pay the bill.”

The statistics are from the 2008 American Community Survey, which contacted about 3 million households throughout 2008. The study offers a look into how state residents and metro Atlantans are living, including the areas’ demographic makeups, travel times to work and average earnings during the prolonged recession.

Some of the findings are already well-known. In 2008, Georgia lost almost 24,000 of the nearly 469,000 construction jobs the state had in 2007. In metro Atlanta, 10,700 of the area’s 230,000 construction jobs were lost from 2007.

And it’s no surprise that more than 400,000 metro Atlantans drive 30 to 34 minutes daily to get to work, the area’s largest commuting group.

And more vacant houses were priced between $100,000 and $149,000 in 2008, compared with 2007.

At a time when health care reform is being debated nationally, it is the area’s uninsured that may get the most attention. This is the first time health insurance coverage questions were included in the ACS. The sample size, larger than the 700,000 interviewed nationally for the bureau’s earlier annual “Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage” report, allows a more detailed picture of health insurance coverage by age and by smaller geographic areas below the state level.

The economy is the most likely culprit in the numbers of uninsured, health officials said.

Suleima Salgado, a spokeswoman for the East Metro Health District, which includes Gwinnett, Rockdale and Newton counties, said clients have said they don’t have insurance for several reasons, including job loss, their employers have cut benefits, or their households can no longer afford insurance coverage.

Kenneth E. Thorpe, a professor of health policy at Emory University, adds that health insurance premiums have doubled since 2000, making it increasingly unaffordable.

West End’s Dr. Michael Brooks said the number of uninsured patients has increased 15 percent over the past six months.

Of the 600 to 700 new patients the office sees monthly, about 300 are uninsured.

John McCosh, a spokesman for the Consumer Credit Counseling Service of Greater Atlanta, said the organization’s education staff is routinely called on by employers to speak to employees who are about to be laid off.

“First priorities are housing, food and transportation,” he said.

“Next we advise people to find some way to carry health insurance. They should check with their employer to see if they can get extended benefits through COBRA, consider getting major medical through an insurer for emergency hospitalization, research low-cost community services and see if they qualify for Medicaid.”

Other census findings include:

● The number of metro Atlanta males ages 15 and older who have never been married is higher than the number of females in the same group: 35.7 percent compared with 30.3 percent.

● The number of never married women in metro Atlanta (ages 15 and older) increased in 2008 to 30.3 percent, up from 29.5 percent in 2007.

● The area is making small improvements in education, with the numbers of people who said they had attended college or earned a bachelor’s degree or graduate degree up slightly while those who completed less than the ninth grade dropped.

-- John G. Perry contributed to this article.