Fusion Tables Assignment - Health Insurance Coverage in Texas

This map shows the percentage of individuals living within each of Texas' 254 counties who do not health insurance. The population being examined includes only those individuals 16 years of age and older. Individuals within the uninsured population do not have a private health insurance plan and are not enrolled in any type of public health insurance program.

The data I used came from the Selected Economic Characteristics portion of the 2008-2012 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates. From within this dataset, I used the "Total Population 16 Years and Over" and "Percent Uninsured" columns.

If I were to write a full-length article to accompany this data visualization, I would interview an uninsured person, a person who does have health insurance, a representative from the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, and perhaps a few medical professionals. Through these interviews, I would be able to portray the struggles of not having health insurance, the security that health insurance provides, what Texas is doing to help more of the population obtain coverage, and how the healthcare system is impacted by large numbers of uninsured patients.

In my story, I would also examine reasons why the uninsured population is so high in some areas compared to others, what prevents people from obtaining health insurance and what types of populations are most likely to be uninsured. Because this data was collected before the Affordable Care Act was fully implemented, it would be interesting to compare this data with more current estimates of the uninsured population to determine how large of an impact the law has had on the state.