PubMed Health⌕ Search

PubMed · 16240951

Downsizing health coverage.

Abstract

The crushing cost of insurance is fundamentally changing U.S. health care. Companies shift costs to employees, but low-wage workers often can't absorb them. Hospitals struggle to provide equitable care to all in the face of a payment system that seems to encourage rationing by income and insurance status. Have we reached the tipping point?

Explore related subjects

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeXRIS

Howard Larkin. 2005. Downsizing health coverage.. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16240951/

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related citations

Vaccination versus "wait and treat": how to subsidize them?

In this paper we discuss the application of different co-payment rates to alternative medical strategies. Two such strategies are considered: a "vaccination strategy", in which patients apply preventive measures before knowing if they have the disease, and a "wait and treat" strategy, in which patients are treated later only if they contract the disease. We show the second approach should be more generously subsidized by the regulator. This is, at least at first sight, a surprising result.

Cost Sharing↗

Tracking health care costs: continued stability but at high rates in 2005.

Health care spending per privately insured person increased 7.4 percent in 2005, marking the third year that the cost trend hovered between 7 and 8 percent following double-digit trends in 2001 and 2002. Data for the first quarter of 2006 suggest continued stability. The trend for 2005 reflected increased growth in spending for hospital and physician care, offsetting a sharp drop in spending growth for prescription drugs. Hospital utilization trends accelerated, while price trends decelerated in 2005. In contrast to stable spending trends in 2005, premium trends continued to decline in 2006, likely reflecting the lagged effects of earlier years' slowing in cost trends and perhaps signaling a turn in the insurance underwriting cycle.

Cost Sharing↗