As the U.S. Supreme Court readies itself to hear oral arguments over the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act's "individual mandate," a map from Gallup shows us which states have the heaviest concentrations of people without health insurance. Nationally, 17.1 percent of Americans were uninsured in 2011. But that rate is not spread equally across the country. Indeed, there is something of an “uninsured belt” running through much of the deep south and the Sunbelt.



Despite the “economic miracle" that has sustained Texas throughout the crisis, more than one in four of its residents (27.6 percent) are uninsured – the highest percentage in the nation by far. More than one in five people are uninsured in roughly a dozen other states, including Mississippi (23.5 percent), Florida (22.9 percent), Oklahoma (22.1 percent), California (22.0 percent), and Nevada (21.9 percent).