Affiliation:
1. Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106-1248;
2. Section of General Internal Medicine, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60637;
Abstract
How does health insurance affect health? After reviewing the evidence on this question, we reach three conclusions. First, many of the studies claiming to show a causal effect of health insurance on health do not do so convincingly because the observed correlation between insurance and good health may be driven by other, unobservable factors. Second, convincing evidence demonstrates that health insurance can improve health measures of some population subgroups, some of which, although not all, are the same subgroups that would be the likely targets of coverage expansion policies. Third, for policy purposes we need to know whether the results of these studies generalize. Solid answers to the multitude of important questions about how specific health insurance policy options may affect health seem likely to be forthcoming only with investment of substantial resources in social experiments.
Subject
Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health,General Medicine
Cited by
183 articles.
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