This historical analysis shows that in the years just prior to the Affordable Care Act's expansion of health insurance coverage, black and Hispanic working-age adults were far more likely than whites to be uninsured, to lack a usual care provider, and to go without needed care because of cost. Among insured adults across all racial and ethnic groups, however, rates of access to a usual provider...

BACKGROUND There is growing concern certain not-for-profit hospitals are not providing enough uncompensated care to justify their tax exempt status. Our objective was to compare the amount of uncompensated care provided by not-for-profit (NFP), for-profit (FP) and government owned hospitals. METHODS We used 2005 state inpatient data (SID) for 10 states to identify patients hospitalized for th...

UNLABELLED BACKGROUND Prepayments and risk pooling through social health insurance has been advocated by international development organizations. Social health insurance is seen as a mechanism that helps mobilize resources for health, pool risk, and provide more access to health care services for the poor. Hence Ghana implemented the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) to help promote ac...

MOre than 46 MIllIOn peOple In the us lack health insurance, as do 140,000 Rhode Islanders (16% of the state’s population under age 65). Most of the state’s uninsured are low income working adults, and thirtyeight percent are low-income childless adults who are not currently eligible for Medicaid. The number of uninsured individuals has been rising in the region, due to decreases in employer-ba...

Most existing work on the demand for health insurance focuses on employees' decisions to enroll in employer-provided plans. Yet any attempt to achieve universal coverage must focus on the uninsured, the vast majority of whom are not offered employer-sponsored insurance. In the summer of 2008, we conducted a survey experiment to assess the willingness to pay for a health plan among a large sampl...

In 1999, community health workers informed us that large numbers of immigrants and refugees lived and often worked in our Scarborough, Ont, community while being denied access to publicly funded health care. Our inquiries uncovered empirical evidence that Scarborough’s uninsured experienced health care access inequities, health disparities, financial hardships, and delayed acculturation. Scarbo...