Swartz K, McBride T D
Urban Institute, Washington, DC 20037.
Inquiry. 1990 Fall;27(3):281-8.
To be able to design effective policies that will provide financial access to medical care to the uninsured, we need to know how many people experience long versus short spells without health insurance. Previous studies of the characteristics of the uninsured have relied almost exclusively on data from a point in time. Using the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), this paper provides a link between the distributions of four characteristics of the uninsured at a point in time and the expected uninsured spell lengths of people in specific subgroups of each characteristic. Our findings indicate that half of all uninsured spells end within 4 months while only 15% last longer than 24 months. Also, people who are employed (either full-time or part-time) in the first month of an uninsured spell are highly likely to have short uninsured spells, while people who are unemployed or out of the labor force are more likely to have long uninsured spells. This implies that efforts to increase health insurance coverage via employer mandates should proceed cautiously until we know how many people with long uninsured spells are employed.
为了能够设计出有效的政策，为未参保者提供获得医疗护理的资金渠道，我们需要了解有多少人经历了长时间与短时间的无医疗保险期。以往对未参保者特征的研究几乎完全依赖于某个时间点的数据。本文利用收入与项目参与调查（SIPP），在某个时间点未参保者的四个特征分布与每个特征特定子群体中人们预期的未参保期时长之间建立了联系。我们的研究结果表明，所有未参保期的一半在4个月内结束，而只有15%的未参保期持续超过24个月。此外，在未参保期第一个月就业（全职或兼职）的人极有可能经历短未参保期，而失业或不在劳动力队伍中的人更有可能经历长未参保期。这意味着，在我们了解有多少经历长未参保期的人受雇之前，通过雇主强制参保来扩大医疗保险覆盖范围的努力应谨慎进行。
