Five stories that have North Texas talking: Texas ranks poorly in health care in new study; Dallas Morning News loses its food critic; check out the average family income at SMU; and more.
Texas ranks as the 11th worst state in the country for health care in a new analysis by WalletHub, a personal finance website.
The study compared all 50 states and Washington D.C. across three broad categories related to health care: cost, access and outcomes.
Texas ranked at No. 41 overall, earning a score of 47.11 out of a possible 100. In each of the three categories, Texas ranked 30th in outcomes, 44th in cost and dead last in access.
The three categories were broken down into 35 more specific metrics such as average monthly insurance premium, physicians per capita and life expectancy. Here’s more on the methodology.
Other results from the study show Texas has the lowest percentage of insured adults (aged 18 to 64), a low percentage of insured children (aged under a year to 17) and a high percentage of adults who haven’t been to the dentist in the past year.
One positive finding: Texas has one of the highest shares of medical providers staying in the state. Explore the study here and in the map below. [WalletHub]
Source: WalletHub
Some links have a pay wall or require a subscription.
- Former major league baseball player Don Baylor died Monday at age 68. He was one of the first African-American students to graduate from Austin High School and the very first to play baseball and football for the school. [Austin American-Statesman]
- Restaurant and food critic Leslie Brenner is leaving The Dallas Morning News after eight years with the paper to take on a senior management position with Rebees, a Dallas-based company founded in 2014. [The Dallas Morning News]
- Plano’s downtown historic district has been added to the National Park Service’s register of historic places, joining more than 300 Texas districts with the distinction. [KERA News]
- The median family income of a student from Southern Methodist University is $198,900, and 67 percent come from the top 20 percent. About 1.8 percent of SMU students came from a poor family but became a rich adult. [The New York Times]
The High Five is KERA’s daily roundup of stories from Dallas-Fort Worth and across the state.Explore our archives here. And sign up forour weekly emailfor the North Texas news you need to know.
