Northeast Ohio Medical Industry and Hospital News

Northeast Ohio's big cities -- from Cleveland to Lorain -- report a higher rate of people lacking health insurance than the state and national averages, according to U.S. Census Bureau data released Monday.

Twenty-two percent of Cleveland's population under the age of 65 has no coverage com pared to an aver age of 13.4 per cent of Ohioans and 17 percent of people nation wide.

Cleveland's rate is the highest among any large city in Ohio other than Canton, where nearly 24 percent of the population has no insurance.

"Obviously, poverty rates and economic chal lenges directly tie into having health insurance and access to care," said Matt Carroll, director of Cleveland's department of public health. "It's a challenge we're trying to meet."

Northeast Ohio's other big cities also fared poorly when compared to state and national averages: 19.4 percent of Akron's population is uninsured and Lorain has 18.3 percent without health coverage. Indeed, the only large city in the region that fared better than the state average was Parma, with 11.5 percent of the population living without health insurance.

The data reinforces why Northeast Ohio has become a battleground in the national debate on health care reform, with President Barack Obama staging his re-entry into the fray at Shaker Heights High School in July.

During a spree of media appearances on Sunday, Obama insisted he has not given up on a public option, a government-run health insurance plan for the uninsured that would compete with private insurers. But the president also has said the public option is negotiable.

Obama's staff sent out a blast e-mail last weekend to rally support for Democrat Rep. Sherrod Brown's town hall meeting at John Hay High School in Cleveland on Monday. Brown has been a strong proponent for health care overhaul, holding meetings with constituents statewide throughout the summer break.

"I believe this bill will be passed by the end of the year, and be signed by the president - a bill that he's satisfied with, that I'm satisfied with, and that the country's satisfied with," Brown said Monday to a largely supportive audience in the half-full John Hay auditorium.

This is the first year the Census bureau has released a breakdown of health insurance coverage by city and county. The numbers track only cities with populations of 65,000 or more. The statistics are from surveys conducted in 2008, just months after the economic recession hit in December 2007.