uninsured

While health policy hasn’t been at the forefront of this year’s presidential election, the next person to sit in the White House could have a transformative effect on health care access, affordability and inequity. Of course, with so many variables in play, it’s hard to predict what either candidate could realistically accomplish on the health care front. However, a new report might provide some insightful clues. Published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine, the report complied results from 14 national public opinion polls from various sources and conducted as recently as…
Everything’s bigger in Texas — including the number of Texans without health insurance. But thanks to the Affordable Care Act, the percentage of uninsured Texas residents has dropped by 30 percent. That means the Texas uninsured rate has hit its lowest point in nearly two decades. In a new issue brief from Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, researchers report that the Texas uninsured rate dropped from 26 percent in September 2013 — before the ACA’s first open enrollment period — to 18 percent as of March 2016. The decline was observed among every age, income and ethnic group…
Public health insurance programs often get a bad rap, despite a growing positive evidence base on their patient care, quality and outcomes. Earlier this month, another study emerged that found Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program not only outperform private insurance when it comes to children’s preventive care, they can serve as a model of comprehensive children’s coverage. Published in JAMA Pediatrics, the study is based on data from the U.S. National Surveys of Children’s Health between 2003 and 2012 — a sample of more than 80,000 children up to age 17 living in households…
More than $30 million in Arkansas, $25.8 million in Kentucky, $105.5 million in Washington and $180 million in Michigan. That’s how much money just four states during just one fiscal year saved under their newly expanded Medicaid programs. A recent report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) summarizes the benefits of Medicaid expansions on uninsurance rates, state health care spending and uncompensated care, finding that “contrary to critics’ claims that Medicaid expansion is financially unsustainable for states, there is increasing evidence that expansion has saved states…
“Established by the state.” Those are the four words at the center of an upcoming Supreme Court case that could strip affordable health insurance coverage from millions of working families and result in billions of dollars in uncompensated care costs. The case is known as King v. Burwell and at its core is the question of whether residents who live in states with federally administered health insurance marketplaces, versus state-run marketplaces, are eligible to receive insurance subsidies. The plaintiffs in the case claim that those four little words in one section of the entire Affordable…
$569 million. That’s how much revenue community health centers will miss out on because their state legislators decided not to expand Medicaid eligibility. The loss means that many community health centers will continue to struggle to serve all those in need, others will have to cut back on services and some could be forced to shut down altogether. “In some ways, it’s status quo,” Peter Shin told me. “But for many of them, it’s a bleak status quo.” Shin co-authored a recent report on the impact of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) on uninsured patients at community health centers, zeroing in on…
tags: health insurance, medicine, Families USA report, medicaid I haven't had health insurance since the middle of 2004. Since 2004, I have held numerous part-time temporary positions, and I was employed for one full year as a full-time professor of anatomy & physiology at a local university, yet even then, I still wasn't provided any health insurance. Further, I was unable to afford health insurance on the wages I was paid as a full-time "temporary" professor (nevermind that I can barely afford peanut butter and jelly as a PT temp). I am still uninsured, but now I am mostly unemployed…