States With Best Health Infrastructure for Covid-19? Where Does Iowa Rank?

Governor Kim Reynolds has announced more plans to re-open Iowa with more restrictions being lifted on June 1st. All this while the state moved up to 13th in the nation for most Covid-19 cases and deaths per capita. 

COVID-19 exposed weaknesses in our country’s healthcare system. The U.S. overall was simply not prepared for a health crisis of this magnitude. The epitome of "being caught with our pants down". WalletHub just released a study to find out which states were most "prepared" going into the pandemic.

To identify which states have the best health infrastructure, WalletHub compared the 50 states across 14 key metrics. The data set ranges from the state’s Public Health Emergency Preparedness funding per capita, to the share of the population that is un-insured, and the number of hospital beds per capita.

Iowa did rank in the top five of two key metrics, however, that wasn't helpful enough to give us a ranking no better than 27th overall.

Iowa is ranked 5th for "Lowest Share of Uninsured Population". That score was likely achieved by the state's "Healthy and Well Kids In Iowa" program or as it's commonly referred to, "Hawk-I".

Iowa also placed 5th highest for "Public Hospital System Quality". Despite, the two top five rankings, lower scores on other key metrics dragged down our overall ranking. The top three states with the best health infrastructure are North Dakota, West Virginia and Mississippi. Conversely, the worst three are Virginia, Maryland and Connecticut.