Survey Says: More Than One in Four Underinsured
28 percent of insured adults under the age of 64 were uninsured in 2016, according to a Commonwealth Fund survey.
The survey also found that:
- More than half of the uninsured are insured through their employer.
- Nearly one in four insured through their employer are underinsured.
- More than one in four Medicaid recipients were underinsured.
- Half of the underinsured report problems paying their medical bills.
- Individuals with higher deductibles are more likely to report problems paying their medical bills.
- More than 45 percent of the underinsured report skipping care they need because of cost.
- Low-income people and those with chronic health problems are more likely to be underinsured.
Learn more about the survey’s findings, its implications, and possible means of addressing these problems in the Commonwealth Fund report How Well Does Insurance Coverage Protect Consumers from Health Care Costs?, which can be found here.
Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf has vetoed a bill that included a requirement that certain Medicaid recipients either work or search for work.
Pennsylvania has safety-net hospitals in both urban and rural areas and many of the communities they serve have access-to-care problems that might benefit from greater access to telehealth services.
The idea is to prevent people from going from doctor and doctor and pharmacy to pharmacy seeking prescriptions for dangerous drugs, and it appears to be working. The state’s Department of Health reports that the number of people who visited five or more doctors to obtain prosecutions for drugs covered by the program fell 86 percent in a year and the practice of visiting ten or more doctors in search of such drugs disappeared entirely.