Roughly 91 percent of residents in the Excellus Blue Cross Central and North Country region have health coverage, making its number of uninsured residents nearly half the national average.

“Our region is in much better shape than most of the country,” said Christopher Booth, chief executive officer of Excellus BlueCross BlueShield. “We’re already where the nation wants to be by the year 2024.” Booth was referring to a Congressional Budget Office report which predicted that health insurance coverage rates for the U.S. population younger than 65 would reach 89 percent by the year 2024. In 2013, Northern New York’s comparable insured rate was 90.8 percent.

The Excellus BlueCross BlueShield report looked at the three-year averages for health insurance coverage (2011-2013) for all age groups. Northern New York’s uninsured rate of 8.1 percent was significantly below the state uninsured rate of 11 percent and the national rate of 14.8 percent.

The report, based on the latest set of 2013 data, will serve as a baseline in determining future gains in providing access to health coverage following the implementation of federal health care reform with the opening of exchanges in 2014, according to Excellus BlueCross BlueShield.

The data was drawn from the final year census data collection just before healthcare exchanges opened.

The report points out that the Northern New York region studied has a population larger than 28 other states, but its uninsured rate is lower than all states in the nation, excluding Massachusetts and the less populous states of Vermont and Hawaii.

“What that means,” said Booth, “is that 324,000 more Northern New Yorkers have health insurance than would have coverage if we were at the national rate.”

In addition, the report contains information on the percent of the population that has health insurance through an employer. Northern New York’s employer-based health insurance coverage rate of 61.3 percent compared favorably to the state rate of 57 percent and national rate of 54.5 percent, according to the Excellus BlueCross BlueShield analysis.

“We have 330,000 more Northern New Yorkers covered due to job-based benefits than we’d have if we were at the national rate for employer-based coverage,” said Booth.

Northern New York, for purposes of analysis, was defined as an area bounded by Buffalo to the west, Utica to the east, Binghamton to the south and the Adirondacks to the north. The Excellus BlueCross BlueShield report is based on data collected from 2011 to 2013 by the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, the largest and most current national data source available.

To view the report, “The Facts About Health Insurance Coverage in Northern New York,” and an entire library of fact sheets on health, wellness and health care cost and access issues, go to ExcellusBCBS.com/factsheets.