Healthy communities have healthy people. To assess access to healthcare we calculated the proportion of people in each region with health insurance using data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
How is it scored?
Access to healthcare in this report card is reported as the proportion of people within a zone with health insurance. The data used to indicate access to healthcare was derived from B27001: Health Insurance Coverage Status by Sex by Age. From these data we summed up all individuals with and without health insurance across all sex and age categories. We then calculated the indicator as the fraction of all people with health insurance. The stated goal for this indicator is to have all people covered by health insurance. Currently the Center for the Future of Arizona calculates that 82% of people in Arizona have health insurance. Therefore, we scaled the healthcare scores so that a region matching the statewide average insurance rate would receive a C.