People uninsured for any part of 2008 spend about $30 billion out of pocket and receive approximately $56 billion in uncompensated care while uninsured. Government programs finance about 75 percent of uncompensated care. If all uninsured people were fully covered, their medical spending would increase by $122.6 billion. The increase represents 5 percent of current national health spending and 0.8 percent of gross domestic product. However, it is neither the cost of a specific plan nor necessarily the same as the government's costs, which could be higher, depending on plans' financing structures and the extent of crowd-out.
Department of Emergency Medicine, University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle, WA, USA; Department of Health Systems and Population Health, University of Washington School of Public Health, Seattle, WA, USA.
A study analyzed hospital transfers for older adults (65+) from 2008 to 2019, finding that over 11% of these transfers were potentially avoidable, meaning patients often did not receive necessary care post-transfer.
Conditions most linked to avoidable transfers included transient cerebral ischemia, nonspecific chest pain, and syncope, with those conditions showing significantly higher rates of avoidability compared to other diagnoses.
Factors influencing avoidable transfers included patient demographics (like being 85+ years old, female, or non-White) as well as characteristics of the hospitals involved, such as their size and profit status.
Background: Many countries have sought to promote well-being for their entire populations through the implementation of universal health coverage (UHC). To identify the extent to which UHC has been attained, it is necessary to evaluate equity of access to use of needed care and the cost burden of health services for the country's entire population. This study considers income-related inequalities in health care utilization and spending in a long-term perspective for the case of the Republic of Korea.
Introduction: Although health insurance is a critical tool for well-being across the life course, few studies have explored the long-term health implications of shifts in insurance coverage. This study examined whether changes in insurance types from adolescence to early midlife were associated with early midlife self-rated health.
Methods: This study used data from Wave I (1994-1995; average age 15.
Introduction: In the United States, more chronic and preventive healthcare is being delivered in the emergency department (ED) setting. Understanding the availability of preventive health services in the ED setting is crucial. Our goal was to understand the availability of a subset of preventive health services in US EDs and explore how that has changed over time.
Objectives: To investigate whether health insurance generated improvements in cardiovascular risk factors (blood pressure and hemoglobin A (HbA) levels) for identifiable subpopulations, and using machine learning to identify characteristics of people predicted to benefit highly.
Design: Secondary analysis of randomized controlled trial.
Setting: Medicaid insurance coverage in 2008 for adults on low incomes (defined as lower than the federal-defined poverty line) in Oregon who were uninsured.
