Uninsured in the Mississippi Delta

The Mississippi Delta is one of the most impoverished and uninsured parts of the United States. The town of Greenville, Mississippi, in the heart of the Delta, has the highest rate of uninsured households in the United States. 34% of households lack health coverage. As the debate over health care reform continues, this is a look at the factors contributing to this statistic in the Mississippi Delta, including unemployment, poverty, a high number of business owners that cannot afford to provide their workers with health insurance, and agricultural jobs that often are only seasonal. Howard Moncrief, a resident of Greenville who cannot afford health care asked, “how do we have more money, more resources, more technology, more wherewithal…we can go to the moon! But we can’t find a way to insure 47 million people?”