scholarly journals Health Insurance Coverage and Risky Health Behaviors among Young Adults

Author(s):  
Barış K. Yörük

AbstractThis paper investigates the relationship between health insurance coverage and risky health behaviors among young adults using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1997 Cohort (NLSY97). Before the Affordable Care Act required all employers in the United States to provide health insurance to employees’ children until the age of 26 (before September 2010), many health insurance contracts covered dependents up until age 19. Using a regression discontinuity design framework, I find that approximately 6 percent of young adults lose their health insurance coverage once they turn 19. I also find that although losing health insurance coverage at age 19 does not have any significant impact on smoking, marijuana use, and risky sexual behaviors among young adults, it decreases the probability of consuming 5 or more drinks a day by approximately 2 percentage points. These results are robust under several different parametric and non-parametric models and not sensitive to the selection of samples based on gender.

1996 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-84
Author(s):  
D'Andra Millsap

Employer-provided health insurance is the backbone of the American healthcare system. Approximately four of five workers in the United States rely on health insurance provided in the workplace. Many commentators view access to health insurance as the doorway to the entire health care system. Thus, the benefits covered in employer-provided health insurance plans significantly impact millions of Americans.While private health insurance usually covers abortion, it traditionally has not covered infertility services. Eventually, courts began interpreting insurance contracts to include infertility treatments, leading insurers to specifically exclude infertility treatments from coverage. In response, a few states have passed mandated benefit laws requiring coverage of some or all infertility services. Nonetheless, current insurance coverage of infertility services is “erratic” at best. These exclusions are significant because abortion and infertility services can be quite expensive for the millions of infertile couples seeking some sort of infertility treatment and the millions of women who have abortions each year.


Author(s):  
Kim Dauner ◽  
Jack Thompson

Young adults between the ages of 18-34 are most likely to lack health insurance in the United States. The Affordable Care Act (ACA), a federal statute signed into law in 2010, contains provisions specific to increasing access to health insurance for young adults including the provision that persons under 26 can stay on their parents’ insurance. While the reasons for uninsurance among young adults have been documented, how they operate and are perceived on an individual level have not been explored in great detail. Further, it is poorly understood how the ACA policies and the state health insurance exchanges can serve young adults. Thus, we interviewed uninsured young adults aged 18-35 in northeastern Minnesota and northwestern Wisconsin and used inductive thematic analysis to explore these issues. Findings suggest that young adults don’t feel at risk for health problems and therefore have low levels of health insurance literacy and place little value on health insurance. Multiple barriers to health insurance coverage, including the provision about staying on a parent’s policy, persist despite the ACA. Our findings also suggest valuable lessons for state health insurance exchanges on how to better serve this population.


2021 ◽  
pp. 107755872110008
Author(s):  
Edward R. Berchick ◽  
Heide Jackson

Estimates of health insurance coverage in the United States rely on household-based surveys, and these surveys seek to improve data quality amid a changing health insurance landscape. We examine postcollection processing improvements to health insurance data in the Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement (CPS ASEC), one of the leading sources of coverage estimates. The implementation of updated data extraction and imputation procedures in the CPS ASEC marks the second stage of a two-stage improvement and the beginning of a new time series for health insurance estimates. To evaluate these changes, we compared estimates from two files that introduce the updated processing system with two files that use the legacy system. We find that updates resulted in higher rates of health insurance coverage and lower rates of dual coverage, among other differences. These results indicate that the updated data processing improves coverage estimates and addresses previously noted limitations of the CPS ASEC.


2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
De-Chih Lee ◽  
Hailun Liang ◽  
Leiyu Shi

Abstract Objective This study applied the vulnerability framework and examined the combined effect of race and income on health insurance coverage in the US. Data source The household component of the US Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS-HC) of 2017 was used for the study. Study design Logistic regression models were used to estimate the associations between insurance coverage status and vulnerability measure, comparing insured with uninsured or insured for part of the year, insured for part of the year only, and uninsured only, respectively. Data collection/extraction methods We constructed a vulnerability measure that reflects the convergence of predisposing (race/ethnicity), enabling (income), and need (self-perceived health status) attributes of risk. Principal findings While income was a significant predictor of health insurance coverage (a difference of 6.1–7.2% between high- and low-income Americans), race/ethnicity was independently associated with lack of insurance. The combined effect of income and race on insurance coverage was devastating as low-income minorities with bad health had 68% less odds of being insured than high-income Whites with good health. Conclusion Results of the study could assist policymakers in targeting limited resources on subpopulations likely most in need of assistance for insurance coverage. Policymakers should target insurance coverage for the most vulnerable subpopulation, i.e., those who have low income and poor health as well as are racial/ethnic minorities.


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.


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