High Uninsured Rate for Mission District Latinos

A quarter of Latinos--about 21,000 people--live without health insurance in San Francisco. They are the second highest uninsured group in the city, next to Native Americans, 36.9 percent of whom have no health insurance, according to the California Health Interview Survey of 2003.

Adrian Nuñez, community relations manager at the San Francisco Health Plan, a city-sponsored program that provides health insurance to more than 50,000 low-income San Francisco residents, says the Mission District has a higher number of insured residents than other areas of San Francisco.

Currently 15.5 percent of Californians do not have health insurance, part of the 40 million people nationally who are uninsured.

While there are several contributing factors to explain the high numbers of uninsured, the main reason stems from cost.

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