The Bush administration has proposed aiding the uninsured population by offering tax credits and deductions to consumers outside the employment-based group market who use Health Savings Accounts (HSAs). It is unclear whether such proposals would actually decrease the number of uninsured. Some analysts have argued that these proposals could adversely affect the employment-based market, causing f...

BACKGROUND The number of uninsured children in the USA is increasing while the impact on children's health of being uninsured remains largely uncharacterized. We analyzed data from more than 23 million US children to evaluate the effect of insurance status on the outcome of US pediatric hospitalization. METHODS In our analysis of two well-known large inpatient databases, we classified patient...

BACKGROUND Health coverage in the United States will be increased to nearly universal levels under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). In order to better understand the impact of the type of health insurance and health outcomes, there is a need to examine health disparities and inequalities between the insured and the uninsured based on their eligibility for coverage. METHODS The current study use...

Federally Qualified Health Centers--commonly referred to as Community Health Centers (CHCs)--serve as critical safety net providers for those who are uninsured or who may become uninsured. This policy brief reports the findings from the Remaining Uninsured Access to Community Health Centers (REACH) research project, which sought to identify the impact of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) on the abi...

Changes in use of health services by the uninsured, when covered after health reform, are a key to the costs of reform. From data on persons under age sixty-five in the 1989 National Health Interview Survey, we estimated their expected use of hospitals (excluding obstetric deliveries) and doctor visits, adjusting for age, sex, and self-reported health status. If uninsured persons obtained priva...

Employer-sponsored insurance coverage forms the backbone of the U.S. health insurance system, yet there are crucial weaknesses that have contributed to a growing number of uninsured Americans. Ultimately, the lack of employer-based coverage generates public costs in the form of taxpayer bills to fund public insurance or uncompensated care programs for care that would otherwise be paid for throu...

The Problem of the Uninsured The problem of the uninsured – those eschewing the purchase of health insurance policies – cannot be fully understood without considering informal alternatives to market insurance called “self-insurance” and “self-protection”, including the publicly and charitably-financed safety-net health care system. This paper tackles the problem of the uninsured by formulating ...

BACKGROUND Low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) control is higher among insured than uninsured adults, but data on time trends and contributing factors are incomplete and important for improving health equity. METHODS AND RESULTS Awareness, treatment, and control of elevated LDL-C were compared among insured versus uninsured and publicly versus privately insured adults, aged 21 to 64 y...

BACKGROUND As one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the Pearl River Delta of South China, Shenzhen attracts millions of migrant workers annually. The objectives of this study were to compare health needs, self-reported health and healthcare utilisation of insured and uninsured migrant workers in Shenzhen, China, where a new health insurance scheme targeting at migrant workers was initi...

This article examines the effect of parents' Medicaid status on the use of preventive health services by young children. Using data from the 1996 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS), we analyzed a logit model for receipt of any well-child visits (WCVs) that compared three groups of low-income children. The three groups, defined by the joint insurance status of children and their parents, in...