A new health care report card is out and the news is not good for Louisiana.

The State ranked 46^th out of 51 according to the Commonwealth Fund Commission, a private non-profit foundation that promotes a high performing health care system.

“Louisiana scored particularly poorly on the scorecard, ranking low among all states, particularly because of poor scores on potentially preventable deaths such as infant mortality and deaths from cancer,” said Cathy Schoen of the Commonwealth Fund.

When you break down why Louisiana scored near the bottom, you can see there are two areas that really pull the state down.

Louisiana is last when it comes to overspending on medical care and sending people to the hospital when preventive care could have helped the patient before they got very sick. And people here rank next to last when it comes to wellness.

While equality of care was about midrange in the ratings, quality and access to care were ranked in or near the bottom third as well.

“It also scored poorly for very poor rates of insurance,” said Schoen. “(That’s) a critical first step for improving outcomes for cancer.”

The study found a strong association between poor health and lack of access to care. If you can’t get in to a doctor for regular care to prevent disease complications you're going to get sicker, you won’t live as long, and you’ll cost the entire system more money.

“If Louisiana could reach just the insurance rates of the top performing states, nearly 400,000 adults and over 30,000 children would have insurance and access to basic care,” said Schoen.

“The states that scored well tend to have very active health care policies that provide health insurance coverage to people, particularly low income people,” said Joel Cantor, the director of the Rutgers Center for State Health Policy. “They have health care systems and state policies that encourage high quality of care. Some states, for example, regularly publish health care quality data for hospitals and those states tend to do better.”