Georgia ranks 48th for Hispanic health care, driven by high uninsured rates

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Georgia ranks second worst in the nation for Hispanic health care, with high rates of uninsured adults and children, according to a report released Wednesday by The Commonwealth Fund.

The report used data for 24 health indicators from 2023 and 2024 to rank how states’ health systems perform for different racial groups.

Poor access to care and low quality of services drove Georgia’s 48th-place ranking for Hispanic health. Only Arkansas had a worse score. (There was insufficient data to rank Vermont and Tennessee; Washington, D.C., ranked second).

In Georgia, 40% of Hispanic adults are uninsured, compared to 23% nationwide. Likewise, 18% of Hispanic children are uninsured, compared to 10% nationwide.

That can make it hard to get care, said David Radley, senior scientist at The Commonwealth Fund, a private foundation that conducts health research and promotes health equity. Only 56% of Hispanic children had age-appropriate medical and dental care visits, lower than other ethnic groups in Georgia.

About 1.1 million Hispanic people live in Georgia, about 11% of the state’s population. The segment has grown by nearly a third since 2010, according to a report published by the Latino Community Fund and Neighborhood Nexus in 2024.

Still, the state’s Hispanic residents have better health outcomes on some indicators than other groups.

For example, Hispanic and Asian American people have much lower breast cancer death rates (at 10 per 100,000 female population) than Black and white Georgians.

That’s an example of what health researchers call the Hispanic or Latino paradox: “Hispanic people, in general, have a hard time accessing care, but they also have better health outcomes,” Radley told Healthbeat.

One factor may be age: Georgia’s Hispanic population is younger than the state’s overall population, Radley said.

The median age for Georgia’s Hispanic population is 27.7, compared to 37.6 for the state as a whole, according to U.S. Census data.

Gigi Pedraza, executive director of the Latino Community Fund, said, “People from Latin America that migrate to the U.S. (and in general most immigrants) have better health outcomes that decline the longer we stay in the U.S.”

Once here, they may lack access to healthy foods, have less physical activity, and face social and economic stressors, she said.

Many Hispanic people in Georgia are self-employed, may work physically demanding jobs and cannot afford health insurance. They often cannot access safety-net programs due to their immigration status.

Undocumented immigrants are not able to purchase insurance through the Affordable Care Act or qualify for Medicaid or Medicare in Georgia. The One Big Beautiful Bill passed by Congress and signed by President Donald Trump in July further restricts Medicaid eligibility for many lawfully present immigrants, such as refugees, asylum seekers, and survivors of domestic violence and trafficking.

Anti-immigrant rhetoric and fear about deportations also has contributed to people’s reluctance to seek health care, Pedraza said.

“Parents feel it is not for their families, they cannot trust the system or their decision-makers,” she said.

Asian Americans had the best overall score in Georgia, indicating better health care access, quality, and outcomes, followed by white people.

Health disparities persist for Black Georgians

Health system performance for Black Georgians was slightly better than other states’, but disparities remain, Radley said.

“Tragically, this is reflected across the age continuum,” said Dr. Harry Heiman, a professor at the Georgia State University School of Public Health.

For example, 10.7 Black infants per 1,000 live births die in Georgia, similar to the 10.9 rate for Black people nationally. But that’s more than double the rate for white infants in Georgia, Radley said.

Likewise, while Black women have high rates of screening for breast cancer, Black women die of breast cancer at higher rates than other racial groups.

Sixteen percent of Black adults in Georgia are uninsured, compared to 12% nationally.

People skipping health care due to costs

Overall, health care costs appear to be one driver of poor outcomes in Georgia, in line with nationwide trends.

Rates of people who skipped care because of cost hit record lows in 2021 and 2022, according to The Commonwealth Fund report. That was likely due to pandemic-era policies, such as enhanced premium tax credits for ACA insurance plans and continuous enrollment for Medicaid, Radley said.

Now those numbers have started to increase again nationwide.

High uninsured rates and lack of access to care affect many Georgians, regardless of their race, Heiman said, and reflect “system and structural-level failures that affect all Georgians.”

Georgia is one of 10 states that have not expanded Medicaid.

In Georgia, 17% of Black adults, 29% of Hispanic adults, 13% of white adults, and 10% of Asian American adults skipped care because of cost, according to data from 2023 and 2024.

And that was before recent policy changes that have led to an increase in the number of people without health insurance, Radley said.

More than half a million Georgians have lost health insurance due to increased costs for ACA plans after a tax credit expired in December.

Rebecca Grapevine is a reporter covering public health in Atlanta for Healthbeat. Contact Rebecca at rgrapevine@healthbeat.org. This story comes to GPB through a reporting partnership with Healthbeat.