High-Deductible Health Insurance May Exacerbate Racial And Ethnic Wealth Disparities.

This study examined the equity implications of high-deductible health plans within the context of racial and ethnic wealth disparities. Using restricted data from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, we evaluated the net worth (in 2011-18) and financial assets (in 2011-16) of families with private insurance and those in high-deductible health plans with and without an associated health savings account. Our results represent, to our knowledge, the first estimates of racial and ethnic wealth disparities within these populations.

Does Private Insurance Provide More Care?

Medicaid provides virtually no-cost coverage to millions of low-income Americans. This study examines whether its beneficiaries realize similar health care access as their counterparts with private insurance. We draw on the 2014-2017 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey and control for observable confounding factors across coverage types by estimating and applying entropy weights.

The impact of Hurricane Maria on Puerto Rico's health system: post-disaster perceptions and experiences of health care providers and administrators.

Background: After its landfall in Puerto Rico in 2017, Hurricane Maria caused the longest blackout in United States history, producing cascading effects on a health care system that had already been weakened by decades of public sector austerity and neoliberal health reforms. This article addresses how health care professionals and administrators experienced the health care system's collapse and the strategies used by them to meet their communities' health needs.

Methods: Data were collected between September 2018 and February 2020.

Decolonial visual resistance as a public health strategy in post-María Puerto Rico.

In this article, we explore the use of the image as a strategy to understand how natural disasters and coloniality impact the health of marginalized communities. We focus on the aftermath of Hurricane María in Puerto Rico and aim to describe how local people used the image as a strategy to challenge the invisibility fostered by coloniality and advocate for a more humane, equitable and effective public health response. We implemented a mixed methods research design including: (1) ethnographic observations, (2) qualitative in-depth interviews with 67 representatives of the health care system, (3) photographs they had taken as part of their experiences during and after the hurricane and (4) images from local newspapers and social media.