Slides that were presented at the 2012 Annual Latin American Social and Public Policy Conference

1. Paul Ricci, MS MA PhD(c)
HealthCare for All Pennsylvania,
University of Pittsburgh

2. Congressman Joseph Wilson R-SC exclaimed “you lie” when President
Obama stated that the law would not cover illegal immigrants.

3.  In 2006, Hazleton, PA (pop. 25,340) passed an ordinance
which fined and denied permits to businesses and
landlords who hired and/or rented out to illegal
immigrants and made English the official language of the
town.
◦ Law was declared unconstitutional but it inspired similar
measures in states such as Arizona.
◦ According to the Census, the city was 4.9% Latino in
2000 and 37.3% in 2010 (661% increase). The city total
pop. increased 8.6% from 2000-2010.
◦ Reasons cited for this, with little evidence given, was
that immigrants drain the healthcare and other
resources of the town.

4. ◦ Luzerne County, where Hazelton, PA is located, had
an uninsured rate of 8.2% (Margin of Error (MOE)
+/- 1.9%) in 2000 and 9.9% (MOE +/-1.6%) in
2007. The change is within the margin of errors for
both years so no conclusions can be drawn.
◦ According to the Census, the county had a
population of 320,918 in 2010, a 0.5% change from
2000. The Latino population increased 440% over
the same period.

5.  The Census Bureau provides county and state
level for the uninsured in the annual Small
Area Health Insurance Estimates or SAHIE
 At the state level the numbers are broken
down by ethnicity and gender but only by
gender at the county level for 2008 and
2009.
 These data were correlated with other county
level data such as Latino population to
provide an indication of county level patterns
for PA’s 67 counties.

6. Year % State % White % African % Latino
American
2008 10.6 9.10 15.10 21.50
2009 11.7 10.10 16.20 22.60
Political pundits often blame minorities for draining government
services however according to the Kaiser Foundation in Pennsylvania
63% of Medicaid recipients were white while 19% were black and 14%
were Hispanic in 2010. Nationally 43% are white, 21% are black, and
28% are Hispanic. 5.7% of PA residents are Latino while they are
16.3% of the nations population. In 2002, 2% of all PA Medicaid
recipients were immigrants of any nationality.

8.  Other County level health and demographic
variables were collected from sources such as
websites like County Health Rankings.
 They were correlated with the % uninsured
and % Latino populations.
 They were also studied together in an
exploratory factor analysis to identify latent
variables among the counties and to see
where the percents Latino and uninsured
would load.

9.  35 county level variables were entered into
the model.
 Four factors were extracted accounting for a
total of 71% of the variability in the county
data.
 The top loadings for each factor are
presented in the table on the next slide.

10. Factor 1 – Factor 2 – Factor 3 – Factor 4 –
Mortality Uninsured Ethnic Clustering Infrastructure
35.9% of Variance 19.7% of Variance 9.6% of Variance 5.7% of Variance
Variable Loading Variable Loading Variable Loading Variable Loading
1 Male Life Expectancy -0.916 % Unins 2009 0.900 % No English 0.920 Physical 0.912
Environ.
2 Years Behind Male 0.897 % Unins 2008 0.876 % African- 0.806 Built 0.591
American Environ.
3 Female Life Expectancy -0.876 % Illiterate 0.789 % Asian 0.757
4 0.873 Education 0.758 % Latino 0.726
Years Behind Female
5 Years Poten. Life Lost 0.861 % in 200% of 0.625 Community 0.722
Poverty Safety

11.  The county level correlation was compared to
that of Texas because
◦ Texas has the highest overall uninsured rate in the
US at 26.3% (Margin of Error +/- 0.2%).
◦ As a border state it has a large Latino population.
39.3% of Texas Latino population is uninsured.
◦ According to the Kaiser Foundation, 62% of it’s
Medicaid recipients are Hispanic/Latino.
◦ It has 254 counties which is a good sample size.

12. Texas Pennsylvania
A fairly strong association was found for Texas accounting for
23.4% of the variance (p<0.001). For Pennsylvania it was
weak accounting for almost 0.006%.

13.  First Factor (26.2% of variability) Mortality
variables loaded.
 Second Factor (22.5% of Var) % Latino loaded
strongly but % Uninsured weakly.
 Third Factor (11% of Var) % Uninsured loaded
more strongly with income.

14.  Although there is a large percentage of the
Latino population without health insurance in
Pennsylvania there does not appear to be an
association at the county level between
uninsured rates and county Latino
population.
 The real issue is a lack of a national health
insurance program.
◦ The Affordable Care Act (ACA) does not guarantee
universal coverage and excludes illegal immigrants.