The share of agricultural workers that reported that it was difficult to access needed U.S. health care decreased by 15 percentage points between 1999-2000 and 2007-2008, from 50 percent to 35 percent, with almost two-thirds reporting in 2007-2008 that it was "easy" to get health care. Over the 15-year period from 1999-2000 to 2013-2014, agricultural workers consistently reported that cost was a main difficulty that they faced when they needed to access U.S. health care (cited by nearly 90 percent of workers in every time period since 2007-2008). Language used to be much more of a barrier to accessing U.S. health care than it has been more recently, cited by 35 percent of agricultural workers in 1999-2000 and only seven percent in 2013-2014.
Overall level of difficulty getting needed health care
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Attention A T users. Data is presented in three formats, a bar chart, a textual data table, and a line chart. The data is best reviewed though the data table when using A T.
Data Table — Overall level of difficulty getting needed health care1
| Category | 99-00 | 01-02 | 03-04 | 05-06 | 07-08 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| # | % | # | % | # | % | # | % | # | % | |
| Easy | 3,010 | 41% | 3,163 | 49% | 3,827 | 60% | 2,172 | 52% | 2,194 | 62% |
| Difficult | 3,712 | 50% | 3,158 | 47% | 2,654 | 37% | 1,402 | 42% | 1,403 | 35% |
| Do not know | 457 | 9% | 148 | 3% | 119 | 2% | 165 | 7% | 93 | 3% |
1 Question was part of a NIOSH-sponsored supplement on occupational health and was asked in 1999 through 2008.
2 The questionnaire was changed to include the "I'm undocumented (that's why they don't treat me well)" response category in 2001; it was not offered in1999 or 2000. A dash (“-“) indicates that the response category was not offered during the corresponding time period.
a Estimates with relative standard errors (RSEs) greater than 30 percent but no more than 50 percent are published but should be used with caution.
b Estimates based on fewer than four responses or with RSEs greater than 50 percent are considered statistically unreliable and are suppressed.