Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 1, 1992 TAG: 9203010044
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
The study, based on surveys by the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research of the Department of Health and Human Services, shows that about 24.5 million people, or 10.2 percent of the population, lacked insurance for the entire year, and another 23.3 million, or 9.7 percent, were uninsured for part of the year.
Experts said earlier surveys found about 13 percent of the population uninsured because that is the percentage without coverage at any given time. The results of the new study may help explain why in surveys, many people express fear of losing their health insurance even if currently covered.
"These findings show that more people have problems with health insurance over the course of a year than we have been accustomed to thinking," said Katherine Swartz, a health economist at the Urban Institute.
"These findings are consistent with our own work that also shows considerable movement of people in and out of the insured population, as they change jobs or shift to self-employment when a job where they are covered gives out," Swartz said.
"I think that this makes it especially important that any health-care reform include provisions so that a worker switching from one employer to another doesn't have to wait to get insurance at his or her new job if it is available there," she said.
An insurance-reform bill expected to be approved soon by the Senate Finance Committee would mandate such "portability."
Pamela Farley Short, author of the study, said people losing or changing jobs or people who lose Medicaid coverage after finding a job accounted for a large portion of those having coverage for only part of the year. People surveyed were asked four times during the year whether they then were insured.
by CNB