Census: 450K people in Minnesota lack health insurance

Minnesota continues to have one of the lowest rates of people without health insurance in the United States, with about 450,000 going without.

That's from estimates released Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau.

It says about 8.7 percent of Minnesota's 5.15 million people didn't have health insurance in 2008. That's up slightly from 2007.

While Massachusetts has the lowest rate of uninsured at about 7 percent, Minnesota is in the second group with Hawaii and Wisconsin with between 8 percent and 9 percent uninsured.

Nationally, the Census Bureau says 46.3 million people lacked health insurance in 2008 compared with 45.7 million in 2007.

The states with the highest rates of uninsured were Texas and New Mexico, where about a quarter of residents don't have health insurance.

(Copyright 2009 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)