Cheapest Health Insurance Not Always in Healthiest States Posted: March 30th, 2010

Is your state among the best places for wellness?

The American Human Development Project compiled government statistics on health, education, and income into a set of indexes and analyzed them. Blending all three indicators through a formula, based on similar research conducted by the United Nations, produced the American Human Development Index (ADHI). Like a Dow Jones Index for American wellness, the ADHI can pinpoint successes and struggles in communities throughout the country.

Northeast and Mid-Atlantic States Rank Among High in Wellness

Connecticut and Massachusetts locked up in a photo finish for first and second place on the Human Development (HD) index, which measures the overall wellness of each state. Connecticut enjoyed a slight edge in both income and life expectancy over Massachusetts. Third place District of Columbia (D.C.) may show that education plays an important role in wellness. Although 16.4 percent of D.C. residents don't have a high school diploma, think tanks, law firms, and government organizations attract highly educated professionals to the region, pushing the percentage of residents with bachelor's degrees to 45.3 percent--the highest in the survey.

Southern States Have the Lowest Wellness Rates on the ADHI

Mississippi ranked last on the ADHI's state-by-state wellness list. Rural states often ranked lower on the ADHI, despite access to state-supported, free health insurance programs. Education and income correlate with overall life expectancy, according to the ADHI's indexing system. Poverty and unemployment in disaster-damaged parts of the country impacted those states' overall scores.

American Human Development Index, State by State

Although states' individual scores on the wellness index ranged from 5.5 to 3.3, many of the biggest differences between states occurred in the education and income indexes. For instance, D.C. scored a high of 7.9 in education, while West Virginia and Mississippi scored the low of 3.8. Likewise, the income index ranged from a high of 7.2 in D.C. to Montana's low score of 3.6.

According to the ADHI HD index, the states ranked by greatest overall wellness as follows:

1. Connecticut
2. Massachusetts
3. District of Columbia
4. New Jersey
5. Maryland
6. Hawaii
7. New York
8. New Hampshire
9. Minnesota
10. Rhode Island
11. California
12. Colorado
13. Virginia
14. Illinois
15. Vermont
16. Washington
17. Alaska
18. Delaware
19. Wisconsin
20. Michigan
21. Iowa
22. Pennsylvania
23. Nebraska
24. Florida
25. Kansas
26. Arizona
27. North Dakota
28. Oregon
29. Maine
30. Utah
31. Ohio
32. Georgia
33. Indiana
34. North Carolina
35. Texas
36. Missouri
37. Nevada
38. South Dakota
39. Wyoming
40. New Mexico
41. Idaho
42. Montana
43. South Carolina
44. Kentucky
45. Tennessee
46. Oklahoma
47. Alabama
48. Arkansas
49. Louisiana
50. West Virginia
51. Mississippi

Cheap Medical Insurance Aligns with Ability to Pay, Not Overall Wellness

Recent data compiled by the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) suggests that wellness is often linked to health insurance rates. For example, the state with the highest overall wellness score on the ADHI belongs to Connecticut, where the KFF data shows that families and their employers often pay more than $13,436 per year for comprehensive health coverage. Therefore, residents of the state with the highest wellness score receive the fifth most expensive health insurance.

The situation in Mississippi tells a different story. Residents there actually contribute more individually than residents of Connecticut, about $400 more per average family. However, employers in the state with the lowest relative wellness actually pay about 25 percent less than employers in Connecticut. KFF researcher may suggest that this lack of employer support contributes to the state's poor health ranking. The cheapest health insurance in the country belongs to Idaho residents, who ranked 41st on the ADHI.

Joe Taylor Jr.