More than half the county has private health insurance. Almost 30% have Medicare, the federal government’s program for those 65 and older.
But another 17% are uninsured, according to the preliminary results of the community health assessment (CHA).
The CHA is the county health department’s most important survey, conducted every five years.
Epidemiologist Nancy Porter is the health department employee crunching the numbers. She said half the survey respondents who are uninsured say that’s because it’s too expensive.
“Part of this was that their employer didn't offer insurance, or at their employment level,” Porter told the Summit County Board of Health Dec. 2.
There’s federal insurance for low income earners, Medicaid, but the survey says just 1% of the county takes advantage of that.
“I think that a lot of that underutilization is due to lack of knowledge,” Summit County Health Director Phil Bondurant said on KPCW’s “Local News Hour.” “And then, of course, we see legacy clients and new clients and the need to re-register every month. And the process is not simple. The process is not intuitive.”
Medicaid is income-restricted, meaning only families making under a certain threshold qualify.
Click here for information on who is eligible for Medicaid in Utah.
So another possibility is families make too much for public sector coverage without being able to afford the private sector.
Experts call it a “benefits cliff.” And it’s something 77% of Utahns worry about, according to a recent report from the conservative Sutherland Institute.
The new Summit County-specific data are preliminary, and Porter is working to release an in-depth report next year.
“It's not going to be a direct comparison, but within our sample, we'll be able to see if we are representative of what's going on in the county and in the state through some of those other, more broad secondary data,” she said.
The final report will also go into greater detail on how factors such as age, income, geography, race, religion, gender and more influence health outcomes and attitudes.
Health officials will use the final report when they ask the Summit County Council for resources when it passes a budget every December.
The health department received over 1,700 responses to the 2024 community health assessment, a 4% participation rate. Bondurant said the sample is large enough and similar enough to wider county demographics to draw statistically valid conclusions.
