Posted by Michael Wonder on 09 Aug 2017
Health insurance coverage and health — what the recent evidence tells us
9 August 2017 - The national debate over the Affordable Care Act has involved substantial discussion about what effects — if any — insurance coverage has on health and mortality.
The prospect that the law’s replacement might lead to millions of Americans losing coverage has brought this empirical question into sharp focus. For instance, politicians have recently argued that the number of people with health insurance is not a useful policy metric and that no one dies from a lack of access to health care.
However, assessing the impact of insurance coverage on health is complex: health effects may take a long time to appear, can vary according to insurance benefit design, and are often clouded by confounding factors, since insurance changes usually correlate with other circumstances that also affect health care use and outcomes.
