Health Insurance Coverage Disruptions and Access to Care and Affordability among Cancer Survivors in the United States

2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (11) ◽  
pp. 2134-2140
Author(s):  
Jingxuan Zhao ◽  
Xuesong Han ◽  
Leticia Nogueira ◽  
Zhiyuan Zheng ◽  
Ahmedin Jemal ◽  
...  
2019 ◽  
Vol 37 (27_suppl) ◽  
pp. 121-121
Author(s):  
Jingxuan Zhao ◽  
Xuesong Han ◽  
Leticia Maciel Nogueira ◽  
Ahmedin Jemal ◽  
K Robin Yabroff

121 Background: Having health insurance is a strong predictor of access to care and affordability. To date, most studies evaluating the effects of insurance coverage measured it only at a single time point. Little is known about the effects of coverage disruptions. This study aims to assess associations of a health insurance coverage disruption with access and affordability among cancer survivors in the United States. Methods: We identified 6476 cancer survivors aged 18-64 years with current health insurance coverage from the 2011-2017 National Health Interview Survey. Coverage disruption was measured by the question “In the past 12 months, was there any time when you did not have any health insurance or coverage?”. Access to care and affordability was measured by: 1) preventive services use (e.g. blood pressure check); and 2) forgoing care because of cost, respectively, in the past 12 months. We used separate multivariable logistic models to evaluate the associations between a coverage disruption and healthcare access and affordability, by current health insurance coverage. Results: Among survivors with current health insurance coverage, 3.7% of those with private and 8.1% with public insurance reported a coverage disruption in the past 12 months. Among survivors with current private coverage, those with a recent coverage disruption reported lower likelihood of any preventive services use (OR = 0.1, 95% CI: 0.1-0.3) and higher likelihood of forgoing any care because of cost (OR = 6.0, 95% CI: 3.9-9.5) compared to those with continuous private coverage. Among survivors with current public coverage, those with a recent coverage disruption reported lower likelihood of any preventive services use (OR = 0.4, 95% CI: 0.2-0.9) and higher likelihood of forgoing any care because of cost (OR = 4.3, 95% CI: 2.5-7.3) compared to those with continuous public coverage. Conclusions: Currently insured cancer survivors with a recent health insurance coverage disruption were more likely to report problems in access to care and affordability compared to the continuously insured. Improving private and public insurance coverage continuity may be effective in addressing these problems.


2020 ◽  
Vol 38 (29_suppl) ◽  
pp. 86-86
Author(s):  
K Robin Yabroff ◽  
Xuesong Han ◽  
Weishan Song ◽  
Jingxuan Zhao ◽  
Ahmedin Jemal ◽  
...  

86 Background: Cancer survivors frequently experience medical financial hardship in the United States. Little is known, however, about its long-term health consequences. In this study, we examine the associations of cancer history, medical financial hardship and mortality in a large nationally representative sample. Methods: We identified cohorts of adults aged 18-64 years (n = 415,114) and 65-79 years (n = 73,571) from the 1997-2014 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) and the NHIS Linked Mortality Files with vital status through December 31, 2015. Medical financial hardship was measured as problems affording care or delaying or forgoing any medical care due to cost in the past 12 months using survey questions consistently available in all NHIS years. Risk of mortality estimated with weighted Cox’s proportional hazards models with age as the time scale, controlling for the effects of sex, race/ethnicity, educational attainment, marital status, comorbid conditions, region, and survey year. Health insurance coverage was added separately to multivariable models. All estimates accounted for the complex survey design. Results: Among adults aged 18-64 years, 29.6% with and 21.3% without a cancer history reported financial hardship Among adults aged 65-79 years with and without a cancer history, the same percentage reported financial hardship: 11.1%. Among adults aged 18-64 years, cancer survivors with financial hardship had the highest adjusted mortality risk (hazard ratio [HR]: 2.14, 95% confidence interval [95CI]: 1.92-2.37); followed by cancer survivors without medical financial hardship (HR: 1.93, 95CI: 1.81-2.06); and adults without a cancer history with medical financial hardship (HR: 1.36; 95CI: 1.31-1.41) compared with adults with neither a cancer history nor financial hardship. Similar pattern was observed among adults aged 65-79 years: cancer survivors with (HR: 1.62, 95CI: 1.45-1.82) and without (HR: 1.34, 95CI: 1.28-1.24) medical financial hardship and adults without a cancer history with financial hardship (HR: 1.17, 95CI: 1.10-1.24) had elevated mortality risk. Further adjustment for health insurance coverage reduced the magnitude of association of financial hardship and mortality among adults 18-64 years, but further adjustment for insurance had little effect on mortality risk among those aged 65-79 years. Conclusions: Medical financial hardship was associated with increased risk of mortality among adults with and without a cancer history, highlighting the need for efforts to mitigate financial hardship in the United States.


2021 ◽  
pp. 107755872110158
Author(s):  
Priyanka Anand ◽  
Dora Gicheva

This article examines how the Affordable Care Act Medicaid expansions affected the sources of health insurance coverage of undergraduate students in the United States. We show that the Affordable Care Act expansions increased the Medicaid coverage of undergraduate students by 5 to 7 percentage points more in expansion states than in nonexpansion states, resulting in 17% of undergraduate students in expansion states being covered by Medicaid postexpansion (up from 9% prior to the expansion). In contrast, the growth in employer and private direct coverage was 1 to 2 percentage points lower postexpansion for students in expansion states compared with nonexpansion states. Our findings demonstrate that policy efforts to expand Medicaid eligibility have been successful in increasing the Medicaid coverage rates for undergraduate students in the United States, but there is evidence of some crowd out after the expansions—that is, some students substituted their private and employer-sponsored coverage for Medicaid.


ILR Review ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 55 (4) ◽  
pp. 610-627 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas C. Buchmueller ◽  
John Dinardo ◽  
Robert G. Valletta

During the past two decades, union density has declined in the United States and employer provision of health benefits has changed substantially in extent and form. Using individual survey data spanning the years 1983–97 combined with employer survey data for 1993, the authors update and extend previous analyses of private-sector union effects on employer-provided health benefits. They find that the union effect on health insurance coverage rates has fallen somewhat but remains large, due to an increase over time in the union effect on employee “take-up” of offered insurance, and that declining unionization explains 20–35% of the decline in employee health coverage. The increasing union take-up effect is linked to union effects on employees' direct costs for health insurance and the availability of retiree coverage.


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