Health insurance, medical debt, and financial well‐being

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Batty ◽  
Christa Gibbs ◽  
Benedic Ippolito
Keyword(s):  
Health Insurance ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Medical Debt

scholarly journals Self-reported morbidities, nutritional characteristics, and associated factors in institutionalized and non-institutionalized older adults

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Abdelhafid Benksim ◽  
Rachid Ait Addi ◽  
Elhassania Khalloufi ◽  
Aziz Habibi ◽  
Mohamed Cherkaoui
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Health Insurance ◽  
Nutritional Status ◽  
Statistical Significance ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Public Institution ◽  
Subjective Well Being ◽  
Number Of Children ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Nutritional Characteristics

Abstract Background As the world’s population ages and people live longer, it seems important to ensure that older people have a good quality of life and positive subjective well-being. The objective of this study is to determine socio-economic, health and nutritional characteristics of institutionalized and non-institutionalized elders in the province of Marrakech. Methods This study was conducted among 368 older adults in the province of Marrakech between March 2017 and June 2019. Of all participants, 180 older adults reside in a public institution and 188 of them live in their own homes. Data on health conditions, nutritional status, functional and socio-economic characteristics were collected. Data was analyzed using SPSS Statistics for Windows, Version 16.0. Statistical significance was set at p < 0.05. Results Institutionalized elders were illiterate (80.0%), had low incomes (95.5%), and unmarried (73.3%), they reported also no children (56.1%) and no health insurance (98.9%). Institutional residents suffered from malnutrition (22.2%), hearing impairments (35.6%) and severe edentulism (43.3%). There was no significant difference between both groups on daily activities and depression. A multivariate analysis identified a model with three significant variables associated with non-institutionalized elders: health insurance (P = 0.001; OR = 107.49), number of children (P = 0.001; OR = 1.74) and nutritional status (p = 0.001; OR = 3.853). Conclusions This study shows that the institutionalization of older adults is considerably induced by various factors such as nutritional problems, lack of health insurance and family structure. To mitigate the effects of this phenomenon, home care strategies and preventive actions should be implemented to delay the institutionalization of older adults and therefore keep them socially active in their own homes.

scholarly journals Social health insurance for the poor: lessons from a health insurance programme in Karnataka, India

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. e000582 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neeraj Sood ◽  
Zachary Wagner
Keyword(s):  
Health Insurance ◽  
Financial Burden ◽  
Tertiary Care ◽  
Substantial Reduction ◽  
Unmet Need ◽  
Social Health Insurance ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Poverty Line ◽  
Social Health ◽  
The Poor

Life-saving technology used to treat catastrophic illnesses such as heart disease and cancer is often out of reach for the poor. As life expectancy increases in poor countries and the burden from chronic illnesses continues to rise, so will the unmet need for expensive tertiary care. Understanding how best to increase access to and reduce the financial burden of expensive tertiary care is a crucial task for the global health community in the coming decades. In 2010, Karnataka, a state in India, rolled out the Vajpayee Arogyashree scheme (VAS), a social health insurance scheme focused on increasing access to tertiary care for households below the poverty line. VAS was rolled out in a way that allowed for robust evaluation of its causal effects and several studies have examined various impacts of the scheme on poor households. In this analysis article, we summarise the key findings and assess how these findings can be used to inform other social health insurance schemes. First, the evidence suggests that VAS led to a substantial reduction in mortality driven by increased tertiary care utilisation as well as use of better quality facilities and earlier diagnosis. Second, VAS significantly reduced the financial burden of receiving tertiary care. Third, these benefits of social health insurance were achieved at a reasonable cost to society and taxpayers. Several unique features of VAS led to its success at improving health and financial well-being including effective outreach via health camps, targeting expensive conditions with high disease burden, easy enrolment process, cashless treatment, bundled payment for hospital services, participation of both public and private hospitals and prior authorisation to improve appropriateness of care.

scholarly journals Health Insurance and Income Inequality

2016 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 53-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Kaestner ◽  
Darren Lubotsky
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Health Care ◽  
Health Insurance ◽  
Income Inequality ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The United States ◽  
Government Programs ◽  
Cost Of Health Care ◽  
Government Benefits ◽  
Economic Well Being

Health insurance and other in-kind forms of compensation and government benefits are typically not included in measures of income and analyses of inequality. This omission is important. Given the large and growing cost of health care in the United States and the presence of large government health insurance programs such as Medicaid and Medicare, it is crucial to understand how health insurance and related public policies contribute to measured economic well-being and inequality. Our paper assesses the effect on inequality of the primary government programs that affect health insurance.

scholarly journals Health Insurance Literacy and Medical Debt in Middle-Age Americans

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacqueline Wiltshire ◽  
Echu Liu ◽  
Caress A. Dean ◽  
Edlin Garcia Colato ◽  
Keith Elder
Keyword(s):  
Health Insurance ◽  
Middle Age ◽  
Medical Debt ◽  
Health Insurance Literacy

scholarly journals May a Government Mandate more Comprehensive Health Insurance than Citizens want for Themselves?

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Voorhoeve
Keyword(s):  
Health Insurance ◽  
Public Goods ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Health Gain ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Poor Health ◽  
Mandatory Health Insurance ◽  
Comprehensive Health

This chapter critically examines a common liberal egalitarian view about the justification for, and proper content of, mandatory health insurance. This view holds that a mandate is justified as the best way to ensure that those in poor health gain health insurance on equitable terms. It also holds that a government should mandate what a representative prudent individual would purchase for themselves if they were placed in fair conditions of choice. The chapter argues that this common justification for a mandate is incomplete. A further reason for mandated insurance is that it helps secure social egalitarian public goods that would be underprovided if insurance were optional. It also argues that rather than mandating what a representative individual would choose for themselves, we should design the mandatory package by appealing to a pluralistic egalitarian view, which cares about improving people’s well-being, reducing unfair inequality, and maintaining egalitarian social relations.

Make the Patient the True Customer for Health Care

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark D. Sullivan
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Health Insurance ◽  
Health Services ◽  
Affordable Care Act ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The United States ◽  
Subjective Well Being ◽  
Health States ◽  
Care Health ◽  
Care Costs

Despite accelerating expenditures on health care, the United States is falling behind peer countries in population health. The mismatch between dollars spent on health care and health achieved raises the question of the value of health services. How should we value these? The Affordable Care act expands access to care but does not question expert valuation of health states and health services. Rather than beginning with health insurance, a more productive path for our thinking proceeds from the nature of health to the nature of health care to the nature of health insurance. If we are to keep health care costs from rising no faster than GDP, we must make the patient the true customer for health care. Health policy should not aim to minimize objective disease or maximize subjective well-being, but to foster health capability. This encompasses the ability to enjoy health and to pursue it.

scholarly journals Critical evaluation of two approaches to achieve universal health coverage in India

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (8) ◽  
pp. 3159 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shyamkumar Sriram
Keyword(s):  
Health Insurance ◽  
Universal Health Coverage ◽  
Critical Evaluation ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Poor People ◽  
Health Coverage ◽  
Insurance Program ◽  
Health Insurance Program ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Universal Health

The WHO report on the path to Universal Health Coverage (UHC) emphasizes that every person should receive the necessary healthcare without enduring financial hardship at the time of getting care. United Nations’ Sustainable Development agenda incorporates one goal (Goal 3) that is related to health and well-being of the population and one of the specific targets of the goal is to improve financial risk protection through the achievement of universal health coverage. More than 100 countries in the world have either started their reforms towards UHC or have already achieved it and India is one of the countries trying to achieve UHC. Out of the 1.324 billion people in India, only 11% of the population has any form of health insurance coverage. Around, 42% of India’s population is Below Poverty Line (BPL). Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana is a health insurance program started in 2007 that provides a wide range of healthcare services for BPL families. Rajiv Aarogyasri Community Health Insurance is a state health insurance program started in Andhra Pradesh as one of the first programs in India to provide health insurance to poor people. In India, 39 million people are being impoverished due to OOP health expenditures each year, and a quarter of these expenditures are contributed by hospitalization Out-of-pocket expenditures even after the financial protection provided by a number of health insurance programs. This review will critically evaluate the two health insurance approaches which aim to achieve UHC in India by providing health protection to the indigent.

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