Implications are discussed for Federal policy of "gap-filling" initiatives at the State and Federal level to deal with the problem of the uninsured. Measures currently under active consideration that involve expansions of Medicaid and employment-related insurance are considered in the light of recent studies of the uninsured and recent simulations of their cost and coverage impacts. The limited...

Uninsured near-elderly people may be particularly at risk for adverse health outcomes. We compared mortality of a nationally representative cohort of insured and uninsured near-elderly people with stratification by race; income; and the presence of diabetes, hypertension, or heart disease, using propensity-score methods to adjust for numerous characteristics. Lacking health insurance was associ...

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (ACA) restricts its health insurance expansions in ways that exclude many uninsured children in California who are immigrants or have immigrant parents. These exclusions directly limit coverage options for noncitizen children. And immigrant parents, potentially misinterpreting eligibility requirements for these new programs, may not enroll ...

A LTHOUGH THE PATIENT PROTECTION AND Affordable Care Act (ACA) was passed in 2010, the major expansion of health insurance promulgated by the bill does not occur until 2014. At that time an estimated 23 million uninsured Americans with incomes below 133% of the federal poverty level will gain Medicaid. An additional 17 million persons will be eligible for subsidized coverage under a health insu...

The economic recession that began in California in 2008 did not affect all counties equally. Using data from several years of the California Health Interview Survey, this policy brief examines the differences between 2007 and 2009 for the populations who were uninsured "for all or part of the prior year." During this time period, counties with high unemployment and lower household income saw th...

Key findings. (1) In 1997, the amount California hospitals billed uninsured patients was more than twice the amount hospitals received from Medicare for the same services. By 2010, billed charges had grown to be five times what Medicare paid, which trans­lated into a gap of more than $10,000 per day in the hospital. (2) Five years after the passage of the state's Hospital Fair Pricing Act, most...

A new analysis of health insurance coverage in America reveals a complex and troubling picture of insurance instability and gaps in coverage over time. Eighty-five million people, or 38 percent of the population under age 65, were uninsured at some point from 1996 through 1999, based on findings from a survey that followed people’s health coverage for four years (Chart 1).The number of people w...

BACKGROUND A major concern by the health decision makers in Gulf Cooperative Council (GCC) countries is the burden of financing healthcare. While other GCC countries have been examining different options, Saudi Arabia has endeavoured to reform its private healthcare system and control expatriate access to government resources through the provision of Compulsory Employment-Based Health Insurance...

This article employs a comparison group research design to examine the effects of the Medicaid expansions of the late 1990s on the insurance coverage of poor teenagers. Results suggest that the expansions were associated with a decrease in the likelihood of poor teens experiencing uninsured spells over the course of a calendar year, as measured by spending any part of the prior year uninsured a...

Health insurance is in the midst of a design shift toward greater financial risk for patients. Where medical cost exposure is high relative to income, the shift will increase the numbers of underinsured people. This study estimates that nearly sixteen million people ages 19-64 were underinsured in 2003. Underinsured adults were more likely to forgo needed care than those with more adequate cove...