JAMA Article - Income As Factor In Uninsured Individuals' Use Of Health Services; Health Affairs Report - Individual Health Insurance Market

Main Category: Health Insurance / Medical Insurance
Article Date: 05 May 2006 - 20:00 PDT

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"Use of Health Care Services by Lower-Income and Higher-Income Uninsured Adults," Journal of the American Medical Association: In a JAMA article, Joseph Ross of the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program and Elizabeth Bradley and Susan Busch, both of the Yale University School of Public Health's Division of Health Policy and Administration, examine whether having a higher income means that an uninsured person would use more health services. The authors examined data from the 2002 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, which was drawn from a nationally representative sample of 194,943 community-dwelling adults, finding that a higher income did not increase the likelihood of uninsured individuals receiving recommended health services compared with insured adults. The report suggests that efforts to improve health care for the uninsured focus on patient education and expanding access to health insurance for both low- and high-income adults (Ross et al., JAMA, 5/3).

"Consumer Decision Making in the Individual Health Insurance Market," Health Affairs: In a Health Affairs Web exclusive, Susan Marquis, a senior economist at RAND; Melinda Beeuwkes Buntin, also a senior economist at RAND; and colleagues present the results of a study of consumer decision making in the California individual health insurance market, concluding that premium subsidies will have modest effects on patient participation and that it might be as effective to reduce nonprice barriers, such as the difficulty of obtaining information. The report -- based on a survey of almost 4,000 people purchasing non-group health insurance from the three largest carriers in California -- also finds that patients prefer health plans with generous benefits and that it is difficult to persuade individuals with health problems to enroll in high-deductible health plans (Marquis et al., Health Affairs, 5/2).

"Reprinted with permission from http://www.kaisernetwork.org. You can view the entire Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, search the archives, or sign up for email delivery at http://www.kaisernetwork.org/dailyreports/healthpolicy. The Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report is published for kaisernetwork.org, a free service of The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation . © 2005 Advisory Board Company and Kaiser Family Foundation. All rights reserved.

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