4-50 pct in metro areas not insured

WASHINGTON, March 29 (UPI) -- People living in Texas are the most likely in the nation to be uninsured while those in Massachusetts were most likely to be insured, a Gallup survey found.

Half of adults living in the McAllen-Edinburg-Mission, Texas, metropolitan area were uninsured in 2011, the highest percentage of people without healthcare insurance in 190 U.S. metro areas Gallup and Healthways surveyed.

The 2011 findings by metropolitan areas are a subset of Gallup's 2011 daily tracking data of more than 350,000 U.S. adults.

Four Massachusetts metro areas have the lowest uninsured rates -- 1 in 20 remain uninsured. Health insurance is mandated by law in Massachusetts.

Nationwide, 17.1 percent of Americans lacked health insurance in 2011. Gallup has consistently found Hispanics were among the most likely in the U.S. to be uninsured since it started tracking health insurance status in January 2008.

The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index surveyed 353,492 U.S. adults by telephone Jan. 2 to Dec. 29, 2011, and has a margin of error of 1 percentage point for the largest cities to 6.5 percentage points for the smallest metropolitan areas.