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PubMed2006

Health insurance and access to care among Social Security Disability Insurance beneficiaries during the Medicare waiting period.

For most Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) beneficiaries, Medicare entitlement begins 24 months after the date of SSDI entitlement. Many may experience poor access to health care during the 24-month waiting period because of a lack of insurance. National Health Interview Survey data for the period 1994-1996 were linked to Social Security and Medicare administrative records to examine health insurance status and access to care during the Medicare waiting period. Twenty-six percent of SSDI beneficiaries reported having no health insurance, with the uninsured reporting many more problems with access to care than insured individuals. Access to health insurance is especially important for people during the waiting period because of their low incomes, poor health, and weak ties to the workforce.

Adult↗
PubMed2006

[Persons insured with the German statutory sickness funds or privately insured: differences in health and health behaviour].

This paper deals with differences in health and health behaviour between those who are insured in the German Statutory Sickness Funds (GKV) and those who are privately insured (PKV). This topic has been largely ignored in German Public Health research. The analyses are based on data from a large survey in Germany conducted in 1998 and including 6822 adults. The multivariate analyses have been performed with OLS and logistic regression, separately for men and women and controlling for age, educational level, income and region. The most important result is that PKV-insured men have fewer diseases and feel more healthy than GKV-insured men. For women, though, no significant association could be found between health and type of health insurance. The interpretation of these results is mainly based on the "selection hypothesis", stating that healthier persons are more likely to be insured in the PKV than in the GKV. This would imply that the "causation hypothesis" (stating that being privately insured has a positive effect on health) is less important. Taking into account the current discussion on the balance between GKV and PKV, it is believed that future research should focus more on these topics.

Adult↗
PubMed1995

Health insurance problems among insured rheumatoid arthritis patients.

OBJECTIVE: To describe limitations in insurance coverage and their financial impact among a sample of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients. METHODS: A national sample of RA patients followed since 1988, completed a telephone interview about health insurance coverage, experiences with preexisting conditions clauses, and the financial impact of arthritis. Descriptive and multivariate logistic regression techniques were used to analyze the demographics and health status data. RESULTS: Trends in insurance coverage among people in this sample showed that participants were more likely to be in an HMO or PPO currently than 5 years previously. A majority of participants (67%) experienced financial impact from arthritis; 35% said that arthritis limited their ability to earn a living. Twenty-one percent had some insurance limitation because of arthritis as a preexisting condition. Eleven percent had been denied insurance. Those who had higher scores on the Stanford Health Assessment Questionnaire, were younger, were covered by Blue Cross/Blue Shield, and were more likely to be affected by a preexisting condition limitation. CONCLUSION: The data clearly indicate that even well-insured RA patients receiving care from rheumatologists experience limitations related to preexisting conditions and considerable financial impact.

Adult↗
PubMed2005

The effect of health insurance on medical care utilization and implications for insurance expansion: a review of the literature.

Both the costs and benefits associated with extending health insurance coverage depend on the extent and exact ways in which health insurance affects the utilization of medical care. We review the literature relating to such effects with the goal of informing researchers interested in simulating the impact of policy initiatives aimed at achieving universal coverage. Overall, this literature is quite consistent in finding significant effects of insurance on all types of utilization. Insurance coverage increases outpatient utilization by roughly 1 visit per year for children and between 1 and 2 visits for adults. For both children and adults, these visits are associated with an increased receipt of preventive care. Insurance coverage also increases inpatient utilization for children and adults; for children, there is some evidence that insurance coverage reduces ambulatory care sensitive hospital admissions.

Adolescent↗
PubMedDate not supplied

When insurance status is not static: insurance transitions of low-income children and implications for health and health care.

OBJECTIVES: Among low-income children, to characterize the frequency of transitions in health insurance coverage and examine associations of transitions with health status and health care access. METHODS: Data from the 1999 National Survey of America's Families were used in weighted analyses to identify sociodemographic characteristics associated with health insurance transitions for children living in households with income <200% of the federal poverty level over the preceding 12 months. In logistic regression models, we examined associations of insurance transitions with children's health status (fair/poor health), postponement of children's medical care or prescription medications, and lack of physician visits. RESULTS: Among 27.93 million low-income children in 1999, 5.7 million (20.4%) had experienced an insurance transition in the preceding year. Non-Hispanic black children (24.5%) and children whose parents did not have a partner or spouse (23.5%) were significantly more likely than other children to have experienced transitions. Hispanic children (16%) were least likely to have experienced transitions. Compared with children with continuous private coverage, children who had transitioned from public to private coverage were more likely to report fair or poor health, children who experienced transitions that included a period of no coverage were more likely to report postponed medical care and prescription drugs, and children who experienced a no-coverage-to-private-coverage transition were more likely to have foregone physician visits. CONCLUSION: Transitions in insurance coverage affect many low-income children and may represent barriers to their health care. Considering insurance transitions may provide a more complete picture of children's health and health care utilization.

Child↗
PubMed2001

Markets for individual health insurance: can we make them work with incentives to purchase insurance?

Simple income-based incentives to purchase health insurance (tax credits or deductions, or subsidies) are unlikely to succeed in significantly reducing the number of uninsured because income is not a good predictor of the extent to which individuals use medical service. Proposals to provide incentives to low-income people so they will purchase individual health insurance need to address the inherent tension between the interests of low-risk and high-risk people who rely on individual coverage. If carriers are forced to cover all applicants and to community rate premiums, low-risk people will drop coverage or not apply for it because premiums will exceed their expected need for insurance. Concern for people who currently have access to individual coverage calls for careful examination of options to permit incentive programs to succeed with the individual insurance markets. In particular, attention should focus on using alternatives to simple income-based subsidies to spread the burden of high-risk people's costs broadly, rather than impose the costs on low-risk people who purchase individual coverage. This paper describes three such alternatives. One uses risk adjustments and two rely on reinsurance so that carriers are compensated for the higher costs of covering high-risk people who use incentives to buy insurance. One alternative also permits risk selection by insurance carriers.

Economic Competition↗
PubMed1980

Catastrophic health insurance and cost containment: restructuring the current health insurance system.

Catastrophic health insurance may be necessary to curb rising health care costs in the United States. A major factor in this rise has been the current structure of the nation's health insurance system, which inadequately protects individuals with expensive illnesses, but encourages over-insurance for less expensive illnesses. This Note examines the current health insurance system, and analyzes its impact on health care costs for individuals and society. It evaluates several proposals to modify the structure of the current health insurance system, and recommends the adoption of a catastrophic health insurance plan based on an economic definition of catastrophe. Such a plan would decrease shallow coverage, and would use coinsurance and deductible rates keyed to the individual's income as means of increasing consumer cost consciousness without making necessary care unreasonably expensive. This Note also recommends that a catastrophic plan only cover treatment that has been determined medically necessary by utilization review, and that this review encourage outpatient rather than costly inpatient treatment.

Cost Control↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Incremental strategies for providing health insurance for the uninsured. Projected federal costs and number of newly insured.

OBJECTIVE: To present several incremental strategies for extending health insurance coverage for segments of an estimated 40.6 million uninsured persons in the United States. Along with these strategies, the federal costs and estimates of the number of newly insured are presented. DESIGN: Using data from the Congressional Budget Office and the federal government, the number of newly insured persons in the United States under options designed to increase coverage among uninsured children, their parents, and workers between jobs are simulated. The federal costs and coverage implications of these options are estimated for federal fiscal years 1998 through 2002. METHODS: Three distinct incremental approaches for covering the uninsured are explored. The first approach would expand coverage through the current Medicaid program. The second approach would provide financial incentives for parents of children eligible for Medicaid to purchase coverage, and the final approach provides time-limited subsidies allowing workers and their families to purchase insurance when they are between jobs. MAIN RESULTS: The federal costs of these approaches range from $2 billion to $3 billion per year (enrollment outreach approach) to $5 billion to $7 billion per year (enrolling parents of Medicaid-eligible children approach). If pursued simultaneously, the incremental strategies under investigation could extend health insurance to more than 7 million uninsured persons in the United States. The cost of these options could be financed through Medicaid savings, restructuring the current disproportionate share payments made through Medicare and Medicaid, increasing excise taxes on tobacco, or all of the above. CONCLUSIONS: The incremental strategies would build on the current US health care delivery system by providing targeted financial assistance to specific populations. By their nature, such reforms could provide a political means for compromise and agreement between Congress and the president. Though the reforms do not, by design, provide a comprehensive solution to the problems facing the uninsured, they would address the severe problems facing many low- and middle-income families unable to purchase health insurance today.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2004

Field based evidence of enhanced healthcare utilization among persons insured by micro health insurance units in Philippines.

Underutilization of healthcare is common among rural and low-income population segments in countries with lower income or inequitable income distribution. Micro health insurance units (MIUs) are created by informal sector groups because people cannot access health insurance or are dissatisfied with the programmes they can access. The policy choice to support MIUs relies on evidence that affiliation with these schemes increases healthcare utilization. This article examines new evidence of the association between affiliation with MIUs and healthcare utilization. We analyzed field data collected in 6 MIUs in the Philippines in 2002 (through a household survey encompassing 890 insured- and 1063 uninsured households). The two cohorts did not differ in demographic parameters, and differed only marginally in income and education levels, both higher amongst the insured. Insured persons reported higher hospitalization rates, higher rates of professionally-attended deliveries, lower rates of delivery at home, a higher frequency of primary-care physician encounters, a higher rate of diagnosed chronic diseases, and better drug compliance among chronically ill. Increased utilization by the insured is not due to adverse selection, judging by two facts: morbidity of the two cohorts, as assessed by a proxy indicator (the reported number of episodes of illness) did not differ; and rates of deliveries were even slightly higher among the uninsured. We conclude that MIUs in the Philippines can alleviate underutilization of heath care.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2001

The mandatory health insurance system in Chile: explaining the choice between public and private insurance.

In Chile, dependent workers and retirees are mandated by law to purchase health insurance, and can choose between private and public health insurance. This paper studies the determinants of the choice of health insurance. Earnings are generally considered the key factor in this choice, and we confirm this, but find that other factors are also important. It is particularly interesting to analyze how the individual's characteristics interact with the design of the system to influence choice. Worse health, as signaled by age or sex (e.g., older people or women in reproductive ages), results in adverse selection against the public health insurance system. This is due to the lack of risk adjustment of the public health insurance's premium. Hence, Chile's risk selection problem is, at least in part, due to the design of the Chilean public insurance system.

Adult↗
PubMed1998

The demand for health insurance by employees in a voluntary small group insurance program.

OBJECTIVES: This study examined the decisions of small group employees to enroll in prepaid plans offered through Healthcare Group of Arizona (HCGA), a state-sponsored and state-administered voluntary insurance program. METHODS: The study population included 653 potential employee enrollees who were offered the option of two health plans between January 1993 and June 1993, with 447 enrolling in one of the two plans. Data sources included two telephone surveys, HCGA administrative files, and enrollment application forms. RESULTS: The estimates of adjusted price elasticity were in the range of -0.12 to -0.24 for employees with prior insurance and were in the range of -0.42 to -0.51 for employees without prior insurance. The likelihood of enrolling in HCGA increased with log(income) and decreased with log(income) squared. The average income elasticity across income groups was 0.12. CONCLUSIONS: The results indicate that small group employees without prior insurance were more sensitive to the price of health insurance than those with prior insurance. Healthcare Group of Arizona health plans may have been viewed as inferior goods by high income employees possible because of their association with the Medicaid program.

Adult↗
PubMed2000

Germany's long-term-care insurance: putting a social insurance model into practice.

A growing population of elderly has intensified the demand for long-term care (LTC) services. In response to the mounting need, Germany put into effect a LTC Insurance Act in 1995 that introduced mandatory public or private LTC insurance for the entire population of 82 million. The program was based on the organizational principles that define the German social insurance system. Those individuals in the public system and their employers each pay contributions equal to 0.85 percent of each employee's gross wages or salary. Ten percent of the population with the highest incomes have chosen the option of purchasing private long term care insurance. Provisions were made for uniform eligibility criteria, benefits based on level of care needs, cost containment, and quality assurance. Over the first four years of its operation, the system has proved financially sound and has expanded access to organized LTC services. The German system thus may serve as an example for other countries that are planning to initiate social LTC insurance systems in other nations.

Aged↗
PubMed2005

Increasing health insurance costs and the decline in insurance coverage.

OBJECTIVE: To determine the impact of rising health insurance premiums on coverage rates. DATA SOURCES & STUDY SETTING: Our analysis is based on two cohorts of nonelderly Americans residing in 64 large metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) surveyed in the Current Population Survey in 1989-1991 and 1998-2000. Measures of premiums are based on data from the Health Insurance Association of America and the Kaiser Family Foundation/Health Research and Educational Trust Survey of Employer-Sponsored Health Benefits. STUDY DESIGN: Probit regression and instrumental variable techniques are used to estimate the association between rising local health insurance costs and the falling propensity for individuals to have any health insurance coverage, controlling for a rich array of economic, demographic, and policy covariates. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: More than half of the decline in coverage rates experienced over the 1990s is attributable to the increase in health insurance premiums (2.0 percentage points of the 3.1 percentage point decline). Medicaid expansions led to a 1 percentage point increase in coverage. Changes in economic and demographic factors had little net effect. The number of people uninsured could increase by 1.9-6.3 million in the decade ending 2010 if real, per capita medical costs increase at a rate of 1-3 percentage points, holding all else constant. CONCLUSIONS: Initiatives aimed at reducing the number of uninsured must confront the growing pressure on coverage rates generated by rising costs.

Adult↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Insurance agents: ignored players in health insurance reform.

In this paper we use the reforms to the individual health insurance market in New Jersey to illustrate the intricate interaction between insurance agents and insurance reform initiatives. Until recently, policymakers who designed reforms to the health insurance market largely ignored the role of agents in selling individual health insurance policies. These reforms have the potential to overturn the agent's traditional role, and agents can influence how the reforms are implemented.

Chi-Square Distribution↗
PubMed1998

Insurance type and the transportation to emergency departments of patients with acute cardiac ischemia: the ACI-TIPI Trial Insurance Study.

The relationship of insurance type to treatment-seeking behavior (ie, the transportation to emergency departments of patients with symptoms suggestive of acute cardiac ischemia) was evaluated. The focus was on comparing patients belonging to a health maintenance organization (HMO) with patients who had indemnity insurance. Data were collected prospectively on 10,783 patients presenting to emergency departments of 10 adult care hospitals in the Eastern and Midwestern United States between April and December 1993 as part of a clinical trial. A total of 6,604 patients presented within 24 hours of symptom onset. Although these patients as a group had a wide range of demographic and clinical characteristics, persons belonging to an HMO and those with indemnity insurance were very similar. The main outcome measures were whether the patient was transported by ambulance and the duration of time from symptom onset to emergency department arrival. A hospital-matched sample of HMO-insured and indemnity-insured patients allowed multivariable regression: HMO membership was not associated with a different rate of ambulance use (odds ratio = 1.0; 95% confidence interval = 0.73, 1.35) or duration of time from symptom onset to emergency department presentation (6 minutes less, P = 0.8). HMO participation was not related to treatment-seeking behavior, as reflected by ambulance use and duration of time from symptom onset to emergency department arrival. However, studies of more constrained managed care organizations and of broader ranges of patients are needed.

Adult↗
PubMed1992

Insurer competition and protection from risk redefinition in the individual and small group health insurance market.

Analyses of problems in the health insurance market usually focus on the individual and small group market. Consumers in this market who experience an illness or diagnosis of illness in one time period are likely to have their future risk redefined by insurers. Despite the fact that risk-averse consumers should desire protection against redefinition of risk, policies featuring that protection currently are not common in the individual and small group market. Contracts offering that protection must either be offered by pools that can guarantee replenishment of good risks over time, or be multiperiod contracts. Risk replenishment is impossible for individuals and may be technically difficult for many small groups. Also, the terms of multiperiod contracts with a single insurer may be unattractive to individuals and small groups, given the current structure of the market. Multiperiod contracts with a pool, rather than an individual insurer, may make it possible for individuals and small groups to enjoy the same advantages as consumers who obtain employment-based health insurance through large firms.

Consumer Advocacy↗
PubMed2004

Genetic screening, health care and the insurance industry. Should genetic information be made available to insurers?

The potential use of genetic tests in insurance has raised concerns about discrimination and individuals losing access to health care either because of refusals to test for treatable diseases, or because test-positives cannot afford premiums. Governments have so far largely sought to restrict the use of genetic information by insurance companies. To date the number of tests available with significant actuarial value is limited. However, this is likely to change, raising more clearly the question as to whether the social costs of adverse selection outweigh the social costs of individuals not accessing health care for fear of the consequences of test information being used in insurance markets. In this contribution we set out the policy context and model the potential trade-offs between the losses faced by insurers from adverse selection by insurees (which will increase premiums reducing consumer welfare) and the detrimental health effects that may result from persons refusing to undergo tests that could identify treatable health conditions. It argues that the optimal public policy on genetic testing should reflect overall societal benefit, taking account of these trade-offs. Based on our model, the factors that influence the outcome include: the size of and value attached to the health gains from treatment; deterrent effects of a disclosure requirement on testing for health reasons; incidence of the disease; propensity of test-positives to adverse select; policy value adverse selectors buy in a non-disclosure environment; and price elasticity of demand for insurance. Our illustrative model can be used as a benchmark for developing other scenarios or incorporating real data in order to address the impact of different policies on disclosure and requirement to test.

Genetic Privacy↗