Florida's healthcare ranking is among this list's worst. Here’s why.

Several 2024 rankings lists have placed Florida among the “worst” states for dental care and mental health care.

And a more recent list from WalletHub found Florida to be among the worst states for overall healthcare, based on the quality and cost of healthcare and health insurance in each state.

“Health care has two crucial components, cost and quality. The best health care in the nation isn’t helpful if it bankrupts the people who try to get it, and cheap health care isn’t worth paying for if it provides subpar or ineffective treatment,” WalletHub Analyst Cassandra Happe said in the study.

“Therefore, the best states for health care are those that make high-quality care affordable, on top of providing many options for doctors and making insurance easily accessible.”

Here’s where Florida ranked in WalletHub’s bottom 10 worst states for healthcare and why.

What is the top ranked healthcare system in the U.S.?

To find the states with the best and worst healthcare systems, WalletHub compared each state across 44 measures of cost, accessibility and outcomes, including the cost of a medical or dental visit, the quality of the public hospital system and share of people who don’t routinely visit the doctor.

According to WalletHub’s rankings, the state with the best healthcare system in the U.S. is Minnesota.

“Minnesota is the best state for health care, boasting the highest number of convenient care clinics per capita,” the study said.

“It’s also relatively inexpensive to get health care in the state, as Minnesota has the fourth-lowest average out-of-pocket medical spending and the sixth-lowest average monthly insurance premium.”

Here’s WalletHub’s list of the top 10 U.S. states with the best healthcare systems:

1. Minnesota
2. Rhode Island
3. South Dakota
4. Iowa
5. New Hampshire
6. Massachusetts
7. Utah
8. Vermont
9. Maine
10. Colorado

What does Florida rank in healthcare?

Florida ranked as the 10th-worst state on WalletHub’s rankings list, in 42nd place.

According to 2022 data from the Commonwealth Fund , Florida ranked a little higher, in 36th place.

“The 2022 Scorecard on State Health System Performance identifies a range of health care system deficiencies, and how they have been exacerbated by the pandemic,” the 2022 study said.

According to the 2022 data, the amount of adults in Florida who went without care due to cost of healthcare was more than 2% higher than the national average of 11.2%, at 13.4%.

Here’s a look at how Florida ranked in the individual categories that contributed to its overall low score:

• 26th – Average monthly insurance premium
• 24th – Hospital beds per capita
• 32nd – Physicians per capita
• 34th – Dentists per capita
• 48th – Percentage of insured adults
• 45th – Percentage of insured children
• 22nd – Percentage of at-risk adults with no routine doctor visit in past two years
• 38th – Percentage of adults with  no dental visit in past year

Here’s WalletHub’s list of the 10 states with the worst healthcare systems:

1. Mississippi
2. Alabama
3. West Virginia
4. Georgia
5. Oklahoma
6. Alaska
7. Texas
8. Arkansas
9. Louisiana
10. Florida

This article originally appeared on Florida Today: Florida's healthcare ranking is among this list's worst. Here’s why.