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Report shows two-thirds of Missouri's uninsured could get health coverage

A new report by the Missouri Foundation for Health estimates that about two-thirds of Missouri’s more than 800,000 uninsured could get health insurance under the federal health care law. The county level data suggest that rural counties will benefit the most.

The analysis uses census data to project how the number of uninsured could change in every county in Missouri under the Affordable Care Act.

The Missouri Foundation for Health’s Ryan Barker, says most of Missouri’s newly-insured will be from urban counties.

“For example in Jackson County, which is the Kansas City area, 70,000 people will gain coverage. Saint Louis County, about 60,000. St. Louis City about 40,000,” said Barker

Barker says in rural areas, which are less densely populated, the numbers will be much lower.

But he says percentage-wise, rural counties stand to benefit the most from the health care law: Knox, Hickory, and Ozark counties, for example, could see close to 15 percent of their residents gain coverage.

Véronique LaCapra first caught the radio bug while writing commentaries for NPR affiliate WAMU in Washington, D.C. After producing her first audio pieces at the Duke Center for Documentary Studies in N.C., she was hooked! She has done ecological research in the Brazilian Pantanal; regulated pesticides for the Environmental Protection Agency in Arlington, Va.; been a freelance writer and volunteer in South Africa; and contributed radio features to the Voice of America in Washington, D.C. She earned a Ph.D. in ecosystem ecology from the University of California in Santa Barbara, and a B.A. in environmental policy and biology from Cornell. LaCapra grew up in Cambridge, Mass., and in her mother’s home town of Auxerre, France.