As Swartz, et al., (1993 (B)) have shown, 48 percent of periods of uninsurance end within 5 months, while 19 percent last beyond 2 years. The median length of a spell is approximately 7 months. Consequently, the length of most spells of uninsurance are fairly short (less than a year), meaning that many more people are likely to experience some period of uninsurance than is indicated by an estimate of full year uninsured.
Earlier in that section.....
...the authors [Swartz, et al.] looked at the characteristics of the individuals in the month just before each period of uninsurance began.
The study is not looking at the entire group of uninsured, but those that were insured and then became uninsured and then became chronic as you put it. It's merely a subset of the total uninsured.
How about the US Census Bureau? For those covered under company provided plans, that includes people covered for "part of" or "the entire year".
census.gov
Including Medicare, Medicaid, Military Insurance, Employer Based coverage, the average coverage of the population was 86%. That's 14% that were never covered at any time during the year, a tad under 40 million. Your computed 7-8 million is included within that 40 million.
What was particularly interesting in that report from the Urban Institute was the treatment of the underinsured.
A recent study by Short and Banthin (1995) estimates the number of underinsured younger than 65 years using a number of alternative definitions of underinsurance and data from the 1987 National Medical Expenditure Survey (NMES). They find that when underinsurance is defined as those who would face out-of-pocket expenditures exceeding 10 percent of family income in the event of a catastrophic illness,[5] 18.9 percent of the privately insured were underinsured in 1987. If the actuarial value of the largest federal employee plan is used as a standard of adequate insurance coverage, 16.4 percent of the privately insured were underinsured in that same year.
jttmab |
