Monroe County ranks high in uninsured adults

In Monroe County, 24 percent of adults are uninsured, 26 percent are obese and 20 percent report binge drinking. Despite this, the county has overall good health compared to Indiana’s 91 other counties.

The County Health Rankings, released in February by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute, were the first set of reports to rank the health of every county in the United States, according to a press release.

The rankings for health outcomes included the premature death rate and the morbidity rate, which refers to people’s physical and mental health.

Monroe County was ranked seventh for health factors, which include behaviors such as smoking, obesity and binge drinking, clinical care, social and economic factors, and physical environment.

The ranking categories are a new tool the Monroe County Health Department can use in the future to rank priorities, Administrator Penny Caudill said.

“No matter how good a community might look in this arena, there’s always things that you can improve on,” she said.

Caudill noted one of the factors that stood out the most was the percentage of uninsured adults in Monroe County.

Twenty-four percent of Monroe County adults are uninsured, compared to 14 percent statewide, according to County Health Rankings.

A high rate of uninsured adults can be attributed to many factory closings, as well as the growing population of undocumented Hispanics in Monroe County who do not qualify for state insurance programs, said Nancy Woolery, health projects coordinator of the City of Bloomington Community and Family Resources Department.

Another factor is that some people without health insurance have misconceptions about the affordability of statewide insurance plans, such as the Healthy Indiana Plan, said enrollment coordinator Lesley Snyder.

While the state government funds the program, those who enroll in the Healthy Indiana Plan are required to pay about two to five percent of their household income, Snyder said.

“There are always going to be people who fall through the cracks,” Snyder said. “But in a lot of cases it’s people not taking the initiative or not wanting to.”