BACKGROUND Medicare spending after age 65 years may be higher for previously uninsured adults if suboptimal care before this age leads to irreversible complications, persistently elevated clinical risks, or delay of costly elective procedures. OBJECTIVE To compare Medicare spending for previously uninsured and insured adults by using Medicare claims data. DESIGN Longitudinal survey data and...

An estimated 55 million Americans will be uninsured by the year 2008 without some governmental intervention, according to a study released by the Health Insurance Association of America. That means that 22% of the nation’s nonelderly population will be without health insurance and lacking good access to health care, according to a report by the American Hospital Association. In releasing its re...

BACKGROUND The uninsured receive less medical care than the insured. However, it is not known whether the uninsured are less likely to seek medical care for highly "serious" or "morbid" symptoms. METHODS Participants in the National Access to Care Survey were asked whether they had experienced any of 15 highly serious or morbid symptoms. Those who did were asked whether they received medical ...

OBJECTIVE No official provisions are made for the medically uninsured under provincial public health programs in Canada. Studies have shown that uninsured pregnant women have inadequate access to prenatal and obstetrical services that favour healthy maternal and child outcomes. This qualitative study aimed to explore the perspectives of family physicians who provided care to uninsured pregnant ...

This study assesses the stability of Americans' health insurance status over a four-year period. Relatively few Americans were continuously uninsured for the four years 1996 to 1999, but a sizable number of the uninsured lacked a stable source of coverage. At least as many people were repeatedly uninsured as experienced a single gap in otherwise stable coverage. Given these dynamics, policymake...

Hospitalizations of Low-Income Children and ChildrenWith SevereHealth Conditions: Implications of the Patient Protection andAffordable Care Act Medicaid reimbursement often falls below health care costs (Medicaid shortfall). Therefore, hospitals face financial losses from caring for both uninsured and Medicaid-insured patients. The US government provides disproportionate share hospital (DSH) pa...

We empirically analyze the impact of uninsured deposits on a bank’s cost of public debt. Uninsured depositors can exert market discipline over a bank and potentially reduce its agency cost of debt through informed monitoring. We use a sample of public bond issues by U.S. bank holding companies from 1994 to 2013 and find statistically strong evidence that banks with more uninsured deposits relat...

Current approaches to reducing the number of uninsured include insurance tax credits for individuals and employers, expanding private group coverage, expanding eligibility for public programs, creating new public programs, and reforming insurance markets. Proposals vary in how they would expand coverage, how many uninsured would be covered, and how much they would cost. Although the costs of ex...

OBJECTIVE Health insurance options are changing. Electronic health record (EHR) databases present new opportunities for providers to track the insurance coverage status of their patients. This study demonstrates the use of EHR data for this purpose. METHODS Using EHR data from the OCHIN Network of community health centers, we conducted a retrospective cohort study of data from children presen...

A new Commonwealth Fund survey finds that in the wake of the Affordable Care Act's first open enrollment period, significantly fewer working-age adults are uninsured than just before the sign-up period began, and many have used their new coverage to obtain needed care. The uninsured rate for people ages 19 to 64 declined from 20 percent in the July-to-September 2013 period to 15 percent in the ...