Research Highlights
All files are in Adobe PDF format unless noted.
Welfare
Reform Reduced Public Coverage Increased
Employer Coverage Among Immigrants
HTML Version
Eight years after passage of the 1996 federal
welfare reform law, researchers and policymakers
still debate the effects of the legislation.
Cuts in benefits for immigrants were part of
the changes to the welfare system, raising
concerns that already high rates of uninsurance
among immigrants could soar. New research shows
that, contrary to conventional wisdom, moving
welfare recipients off the public assistance
rolls did not necessarily leave immigrants
without health insurance coverage. While welfare
reform reduced the level of Medicaid coverage
for immigrants as a whole, many were able to
obtain employer-sponsored coverage (ESI). Residents
in states with less generous public assistance
benefits were significantly more likely to
have ESI than immigrants living in states that
offered more generous aid.
Q & A with
George Borjas, Ph.D. (HTML)
Read more about why George Borjas, the Robert
W. Scrivner Professor of Economics and Social
Policy at Harvard University’s John F.
Kennedy School of Government, believes that
welfare reform led to higher rates of ESI among
immigrants.
For a summary of findings, data, and methods,
see the Research
Findings Document (HTML)
How
Many Are Uninsured? Different Data Offer
Different Dimensions
HTML
version
Many of us have become comfortable
thinking about “the uninsured” in
terms of the statistic reported by the annual
Current Population Survey—43.6million
in 2002. The CPS number is a useful estimate
of year-to-year change, but masks key information.
The number and composition of the uninsured
changes dramatically if you look at the uninsured
during a particular month rather than over
an entire year. Getting accurate and timely
estimates of how many people experience what
kinds of spells of uninsurance is important
in order to craft effective policies for
the uninsured. Further, those uninsured all
year differ from those individuals who lose
coverage for only part of the year.
Q&A
with Mary Harrington, ERIU (HTML)
Read more about why Mary Harrington,
of the Economic Research Institute on the
Uninsured, believes that it is important
for researchers and policymakers to look
at other data sources on the uninsured and
not over-rely on the Current Population Survey.
Full
set of Fast Facts data (HTML)
Rising Uninsured Rates: It's Employment, Not the Economy, Stupid
HTML version
The current economic recovery may not yet be good news for Americans looking to keep or gain back their health insurance coverage. Researchers warn that the threat of becoming or remaining uninsured is substantial, even when the economy is improving. The most recent recession ended in November 2001, but unemployment continued to rise through June 2003. The economic downturn led to more than one million Americans losing coverage during the recession, and the economy has yet to make up for these losses more than two years into the recovery.
Q&A with John Cawley, Ph.D. (HTML)
Read more about why John Cawley, who co-authored the paper Health Insurance Coverage and the Macroeconomy for ERIU, believes that it's employment, not the economy, that matters in determining workers' health insurance status.
For a summary of findings, data, and methods, see the Research Findings Document (HTML)
No Bang for the Buck: Subsidizing Workers' Premiums to Reduce Uninsured
HTML Version
About one-quarter of those who lack
health insurance live in a household in which
someone declined to take coverage offered
at work. On the surface, targeting those
who currently are offered health insurance
and subsidizing their premiums appears to
be an easy way to increase rates of insurance coverage.
However, new research suggests this might
not be the case.
Q&A with Jonathan Gruber, Ph.D. (HTML)
For a summary of findings, data, and
methods, see the Research
Findings Document (HTML)
Can
the Employer-Based Health Insurance System
Reduce America's Uninsured?
HTML Version
Policymakers continually look to the employer-based health insurance system when proposing new solutions to reduce the number of uninsured Americans. Unfortunately, the solution to this ever growing problem is not that simple. There are many employee- and employer-based factors to consider, and much that we don't yet know about how employers and employees respond to different financial incentives.
Q & A
with Linda Blumberg, Ph.D. (HTML)
Read more about why Dr. Blumberg,
who co-wrote the paper "Can the Employer-Based Health Insurance System Reduce America's Uninsured?" for
ERIU, believes that increasing insurance
coverage through tax credits and subsidies
is not as easy as it sounds.
Jumping to Conclusions: Will Expanding Health Care Insurance Improve the Health of the Uninsured?
HTML Version
Hundreds of studies document that people without health insurance have worse outcomes than those with coverage. Is this evidence enough to conclude that having health insurance would improve the health of the uninsured?
Q&A
with David Meltzer, M.D., Ph.D. (HTML)
Read more about why Dr. Meltzer, who
co-wrote the paper "What Do We Really Know About Whether Health Insurance Affects Health?" for
ERIU, believes we know less about the best
ways to improve the health of the uninsured
than we think we know.
A Revolving Door: How Individuals Move In and Out of Health Insurance Coverage
Many health care experts think of the more than 41 million Americans without health care coverage as a group of chronically uninsurable individuals whose status rarely changes. However, longitudinal research shows that the uninsured are a dynamic, diverse, and constantly evolving pool of people--and that over a two-year period, actually 80 million Americans lack health insurance at some point.
Q&A
with Pamela Farley Short, Ph.D. (HTML)
Read more about why Dr. Short, Professor
of Health Policy and Administration at Pennsylvania
State University, who recently wrote the
paper "Counting and Characterizing the Uninsured" for
ERIU, believes it's critical that policymakers
understand who comprises the uninsured.
|
