Tag: "Uninsured"

What If They Gave an Exchange and Nobody Came?

With almost one in five of its residents lacking health insurance, officials in Palm Beach County thought they had hit on a smart solution. The county launched a program that offered subsidized coverage to residents who couldn’t afford private insurance, but made too much to qualify for Medicaid, the state-federal program for the poor. Enrollees would be able to buy policies for about $52 a month — far cheaper than what private insurers were offering. But a year after the program began, fewer than 500 people had signed up — less than a third of the number expected.

More examples from Kaiser Health News.

Apr 02, 2013 | 12 comments | by

Boy Dies — Because He Was Insured By Medicaid

Deamonte Driver died not because he was uninsured. Indeed, Deamonte Driver died because he was insured — by the government. Deamonte, it turns out, was on Medicaid…

Although Deamonte was insured, he never received routine dental care. It turns out that only 16 percent of Maryland dentists accept Medicaid patients. Fewer than one-sixth of Maryland kids on Medicaid have ever had a cavity filled…

You’d think that many mothers in Alyce’s position would find a way around this problem, that she could offer to supplement Medicaid’s penurious fees in order to gain access to a better dentist for her two sons. But that would be illegal.

More from Avik Roy.

Mar 28, 2013 | 12 comments | by

Uwe Reinhardt Does Something I Like

He describes it here:

Five months after the commission [Chi aired by Reinhart] filed its final report, Governor Corzine introduced and New Jersey’s State Assembly passed Assembly Bill No. 2609. It limits the maximum allowable price that can be charged to uninsured New Jersey residents with incomes up to 500 percent of the federal poverty level to what Medicare pays plus 15 percent, terms the governor’s office had negotiated with New Jersey’s hospital industry.

I don’t favor government price fixing. But if an uninsured patient enters a hospital, somebody has to figure out what fee should be paid. The hospital’s list prices are phony prices that other customers are not paying and that were basically selected in order to maximize against third-party payment formulas, given the wacko way that Medicare pays. When the hospital tries to charge the uninsured patient list prices it is implicitly pretending that these are market prices, when they are not. So if I were on a jury having to decide who owes what, the New Jersey solution is about what I would decide.

Mar 15, 2013 | 16 comments | by

The Shrinking Role of the Employer

The share of the U.S. population over the age of 15 covered by employment-based health insurance (either by their own employer or as a dependent) has been falling, dropping from 64.4% in 1997 to 56.5% in 2010.

Of the employed, 70.2% have employment based health insurance in 2010, down from 76.2% back in 2002. Of the employed, 18% have no health insurance in 2010, compared with 14.5% of the employed back in 2002.

More from Timothy Taylor.

Mar 07, 2013 | 11 comments | by

ObamaCare Double Whammy for the Young and Uninsured

This is courtesy of Avik Roy:

Actuaries report: 80 percent of Americans below the age of thirty in the individual market will face higher premiums under ObamaCare, despite subsidies.

Why that is important: about two-thirds of the uninsured population is under the age of 40.

The bait and switch: President Obama repeatedly promised that his bill would “bring down premiums by $2,500 for the typical family.”

Jan 22, 2013 | 5 comments | by

Free Market Medicine Comes To the Internet

Groupon, the market leader, had about 115 million subscribers in 2011, which he says are mostly 20- to 40-year-old college-educated women. Living Social says it has about 70 million members…

While most health-related deals on sites like Groupon and Living Social are for cosmetic procedures like Botox, providers also offer everyday medical, vision and dental services…Health and medical deals make up about 5 to 10 percent of the online coupon industry…

Dr. John Muney, head of AMG Medical Group, based in New York, said the company’s Groupon deals brought more than 1,000 people to AMG’s six clinics for cholesterol and blood sugar testing, and regular checkups, over the course of a year. Most of the new patients, he said, were low-income, uninsured or on high-deductible plans.

Source: Kaiser Health News.

Jan 14, 2013 | 6 comments | by

Lessons for Political Scientists

One of the most remarkable things about the Affordable Care Act is how little support there is among all the people who are supposed to benefit. We have gone through two national elections without any visible voting bloc of beneficiaries offering their support to candidates.

“Virtually no one who is uninsured understand[s] how health reform will affect their lives,” Ron Pollack, who chairs Enroll America’s board, told me after the focus groups. “While some focus group participants have heard the term ObamaCare, literally none of them have an inkling about whether, and how, their lives will be affected.”

Sarah Kliff at the Ezra Klein blog.

Dec 05, 2012 | 9 comments | by

The Voluntarily Uninsured

I always enjoy reading anything Isaac Ehrlich writes. In an NBER Working Paper with Yong Yin, he models the decision to buy health insurance. Since health insurance regulations prevent risk from being priced accurately, it turns out that self-insuring or relying on free care from safety note institutions is often optimal:

Our calibrated simulations [] indicate that self-insurance and self-protection account for 31.3% of the uninsured by the baseline model, or 28.2% by the extended model. Jointly with the safety net system, these alternatives account for 50.3% and 45.5% of the uninsured, respectively. [...]

HT: Austin Frakt.

Nov 28, 2012 | 8 comments | by

Ah, So This is What Universal Coverage Looks Like

Theresa Day, 50, had been waiting two hours for her appointment at the To Help Everyone Clinic, a community fixture at 38th Street and Western Avenue for more than 30 years. A bus driver who lost her job and insurance, she tapped her finger on the chair and flipped through a novel. More than once, she walked down the hall to ask how much longer she would have to wait.

“This is awful,” said Day, who suffers from rheumatoid arthritis and used to go to Kaiser. She says she never thought “in a million years” that she would need to come to a clinic for medical care.

As it struggles to care for existing patients, nearly 55% of whom are uninsured and 30% covered by Medi-Cal, the clinic is trying to prepare for more.

More from the LA Times.

Nov 07, 2012 | 13 comments | by

Socialism Kills

In a recent Health Alert I evaluated Paul Krugman’s claim that ObamaCare is going to save “tens of thousands of lives” and the repeal of ObamaCare will lead to the death of “tens of thousands” of uninsured people.

Krugman’s bottom line: Mitt Romney wants to let people die. The economics profession on this same subject: Krugman’s claims are hogwash.

But there is something that does cause people to die: socialism. More precisely, the suppression of free markets (the kinds of interventions Krugman routinely apologizes for) lowers life expectancy and does so substantially.

Nov 07, 2012 | 34 comments | by
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