Health Insurance and You!

On this blog, we’ve written often about the differences in health care patterns between people with health insurance and those who are uninsured and underinsured. Some are expected, such as the fact that people without coverage tend to use emergency care more frequently and aren’t able to afford as much preventive care. Others are more surprising, like the recent study that found no association between insurance status and use of walk-in clinics.

Last month, researchers at the American College of Radiology published an article comparing the use of emergency room imaging tests – including x-rays, MRIs, CT scans, and ultrasounds – between people without insurance, people with Medicaid (who some consider underinsured), and people with other insurance. They found that Medicaid patients were about 10% less likely than those with other insurance to receive any imaging, and uninsured patients were about 8% less likely. This pattern was quite consistent across different types of imaging.

The researchers noted that more research needs to be done to determine if people with non-Medicaid insurance were getting unnecessary imaging done, or people with Medicaid or no insurance were not getting enough.

What’s more certain is that the uninsured patients were not getting the care they needed. According to the study results, uninsured patients were less likely to be admitted to the hospital and receive follow-up treatment, and were more likely to leave before being seen and even to die in the emergency department. This agrees with previous studies that found that the uninsured are less likely to get timely health care, which means they are usually sicker when they first arrive at a clinic or hospital. One would expect a sicker patient to need more imaging and other care, but the results show that what’s happening is just the opposite.

Readers, how would you address this issue? If you’ve ever been uninsured (or know someone who has), how has it affected the way you use health care services?