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Not covering uninsured has its own costs

A new Kaiser Family Foundation report finds "compelling" evidence that lack of health coverage contributes to worse health outcomes and higher mortality rates.

By Amy Snow Landa, amednews staff. May 27, 2002.

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Washington -- When lawmakers debate proposals for expanding access to health insurance, the discussion often boils down to one question: How much will it cost?

A group of health care researchers is trying to turn that question around by asking: What is the cost of not covering the nearly 40 million Americans who lack health insurance?

The Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, funded by the Kaiser Family Foundation, has launched an initiative aimed at estimating the potential economic benefit to the nation of having everyone covered by health insurance.

The project "was born out of frustration" with the narrow focus of the current debate over covering the uninsured, said Diane Rowland, ScD, the commission's executive director.

Policy-makers tend to focus on the direct cost of expanding coverage, she said, while overlooking the potential savings to be reaped through better and more efficient use of the health care system. The commission hopes by this fall to put a dollar estimate on the overall financial benefit of covering the uninsured.

As a first step in that direction, commission members decided to evaluate whether having insurance actually has a positive effect on people's health. Improved health, the thinking goes, allows people to be more productive in society and, in some ways, reduces costs in the health care system.

Many people, including some policy-makers, don't think that people who are uninsured actually experience worse health as a result, Dr. Rowland said. "The myth out there is that even if you are uninsured, you get health care anyway." [...]