David Trujillo has never been hospitalized, never suffered from a chronic illness nor faced a medical emergency in his life, a fortunate circumstance considering he’s never had access to affordable health insurance.

Trujillo, 25, a Chicago native, said, as far as health insurance goes, it really doesn’t exist for people in his situation.

Illinois’ Latinos account for more than 57 percent of citizens who’ve never had employer-provided health care. Dr. Aída Giachello, director of the Midwest Latino Health Research, Training and Policy Center at the University of Illinois at Chicago, said that statewide, Latinos are more uninsured than any other race.

Given the data, Latinos are the largest ethnic group that stands to benefit from the U.S. health reform bill, which would provide coverage for an estimated 30 million Americans – including the approximate seven to nine million Latinos in the country.

Trujillo’s parents, who came from México, never had jobs with fringe benefits. In turn, since entering the work force at 17, Trujillo has never received employer-provided health insurance.

The U.S. Department of Labor reports Latinos usually have a higher employment rate than non-Hispanic blacks or non-Hispanic whites.
 
Income or culture
Dr. H. Shelton Brown, of the University of Texas, Houston, said a key to understanding why Latinos lack insurance is the correlation between their age and their health.

“If you look at the people that don’t have insurance in the U.S., a lot of them are young and healthy,” Brown said.

The so-called “Hispanic Paradox” plays a factor in the health of Latinos. The phenomenon discovered in the 1980s shows that, on average, Latinos have a higher life expectancy rate than blacks or whites in the country, Brown said.

Brown, a health economist, doesn’t ...