Tools
BCBS Health Issues: The Uninsured
Web site
Links to news and publications on issues related to the uninsured.
Cover the Uninsured
Web site
Information on events, resources, facts and publications addressing the issue of uninsurance.
Cover the Uninsured: Resources for Individuals
Database
Lists resources and programs by state that can help individuals find health insurance, help paying for prescription medication, and related needs.
HRSA Information Center
Web site
Provides publications, information, resources, and referrals about health care services for medically underserved individuals and populations.
Insure Kids Now!
Web site
Supplies information on free and low-cost health insurance programs for children including Medicaid and CHIP (Children's Health Insurance Program).
KaiserEDU
Web site
Detailed resource lists and tutorials on health policy and public health topics, with links to publications, data, and organizations. Topics covered include Medicare, Medicaid, the uninsured, quality of care, and more. Designed for health policy students and faculty.
Key Resources on Health Coverage and the Uninsured
Web site
Contains links to recent resources on health insurance coverage and the uninsured.
MedlinePlus: Health Insurance
Database
Contains a list of resources including news, related issues, organizations, and statistics related to health insurance.
Rural Health Research: Health insurance and the uninsured
Web site
Provides summaries of current and completed rural health research projects and related publications addressing the topic of health insurance and the uninsured, produced by the Office of Rural Health Policy's funded rural health research centers.
State Coverage Initiatives
Web site
Works with states to plan, execute, and maintain health insurance expansions, as well as to improve the availability and affordability of health care coverage.
State Coverage Initiatives for Children
Web site
Map and state-by-state summary of state efforts to provide health insurance coverage for children.
Uninsured: The Basics
Web site
Contains a list of resources for obtaining key data on the uninsured.
Regulations, Forms & Other Useful Documents
Americans at Risk: One in Three Uninsured
Sponsoring organization: Families USA
Offers a closer look at the number of Americans without health insurance and discusses the major underlying reasons for the growth in the number of uninsured.
Date: 03 / 2009
Approaches to Covering the Uninsured: A Guide
Author(s): Jennifer Tolbert, Jack Ebeler, Tanya Schwartz
Sponsoring organization: Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured
Explains the key strategies for expanding coverage to the nation's 45 million uninsured people and explains how different policy options can be combined to form comprehensive reform proposals.
Date: 12 / 2008
Causes and Consequences of the Rural Uninsured and Underinsured
Author(s): Joe Blankenau, Jon M. Bailey, Julia Hudson
Sponsoring organization: Center for Rural Affairs
Details health insurance coverage in rural America. Includes how rural citizens get insurance coverage and how it differs from urban America, reviews research that explores obstacles in attaining health insurance, addresses the problem of underinsurance, and explores the impact of inadequate financing for health care and its effects on the community. Concludes that health care reform must address the employer-sponsored health insurance system.
Date: 04 / 2009
Chartbook #13: Health Care in Urban and Rural Areas, Combined Years 1998-2000
Author(s): Sharon L. Larson, Steven R. Machlin, Alice Nixon, Marc Zodet
Sponsoring organization: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality
Examines the differences in health care access, use, and expenses between urban and rural areas. Counties are classified along the urban-rural continuum according to whether they are metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) and, if not, their proximity to an MSA. An MSA is a large population nucleus with a high degree of economic and social interaction. The categories along the continuum are metro (counties in an MSA), near-metro, near-rural, and rural.
Date: 06 / 2004
Downwardly Mobile: The Accidental Cost of Being Uninsured
Author(s): Heather Rosen; Fady Saleh; Stuart Lipsitz; Selwyn O. Rogers Jr; Atul A. Gawande
Sponsoring organization: American Medical Association
Demonstrates that uninsured patients with traumatic injuries, such as car crashes, falls and gunshot wounds, were almost twice as likely to die in the hospital as similarly injured patients with health insurance. Details the results of a Harvard University study.
Journal citation: Archives of Surgery Volume 144 Issue 11
Date: 11 / 2009
Five Basic Facts on the Uninsured
Sponsoring organization: Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured
Provides basic facts that explain why so many people in America lack health coverage and how being uninsured affects their health and financial security.
Date: 09 / 2009
Health Care and the Middle Class: More Costs and Less Coverage
Sponsoring organization: Kaiser Family Foundation
Focuses on health insurance coverage among those with middle incomes — its availability,
affordability, and stability.
Date: 07 / 2009
Health Care in Rural America
Sponsoring organization: Center for Rural Affairs
Discusses issues related to health insurance coverage and health care costs of rural people. Includes information on the rural uninsured and undersinsured and discusses possible solutions to provide health insurance coverage to the rural uninsured and underinsured.
Date: 10 / 2004
Health Coverage in a Period of Rising Unemployment
Author(s): Karyn Schwartz
Sponsoring organization: Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured
Reviews the public and private options available to help people maintain coverage if they become unemployed cannot get employer-sponsored coverage through a spouse. Examines COBRA, non-group insurance and Medicaid.
Date: 12 / 2008
Health Insurance Coverage for Older Adults: Implications of a Medicare Buy-In
Author(s): Gretchen Jacobson, Karyn Schwartz, Tricia Neuman
Sponsoring organization: Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured
Examines the barriers to securing affordable coverage in the current marketplace for uninsured people ages 55 to 65, as well as the potential for a Medicare buy-in to improve the group’s health insurance coverage rate.
Date: 05 / 2009
Health Insurance Coverage in Rural America: Chartbook
Author(s): Erika C. Ziller, Andrew F. Coburn, Stephenie L. Loux, Catherine Hoffman, Timothy D. McBride
Sponsoring organization: Kaiser Family Foundation
Information on rural-urban differences in health insurance coverage and differences in socio-economic and employment characteristics of those living in rural versus urban counties.
Date: 09 / 2003
Hidden Link: Health Costs and Family Economic Insecurity
Sponsoring organization: Families USA
Identifies how health care costs and medical debt affects family economic security.
Date: 01 / 2009
Impact of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act on Covered Persons as Amended
Author(s): Tim McBride
Sponsoring organization: RUPRI Center for Rural Health Policy Analysis
An analysis of the Patient Protection and Affordable Coverage Act (as amended on December 19, 2009 by the Senate Majority Leader’s Manager’s Amendment) using statistics and data to identify how it would reduce the number of uninsured in non-metropolitan areas.
Date: 12 / 2009
Impact of the Recession on Rural America: Rising Unemployment Leading to More Uninsured in 2009
Author(s): Timothy McBride, Leah Kemper
Sponsoring organization: RUPRI Center for Rural Health Policy Analysis
Presents the results of state and county analysis of unemployment rates nationally in urban and rural (non-metropolitan) areas over the period 2007-February 2009 and discusses the impact of rising unemployment on uninsurance in rural areas and their combined impact on the need for health care reform.
Date: 06 / 2009
Impact of Welfare Reform on Health Insurance Coverage in Rural Areas
Author(s): Timothy D. McBride, Courtney Andrews
Sponsoring organization: RUPRI Center for Rural Health Policy Analysis
Discusses the impact that welfare reform had on health insurance coverage for rural and urban areas. Includes information on employment status and health insurance coverage.
Date: 12 / 2005
Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2008
Author(s): Carmen DeNavas-Walt, Bernadette D. Proctor, Jessica C. Smith
Sponsoring organization: U.S. Census Bureau
Provides the latest income, poverty, and health insurance data from the Current Population Survey.
Date: 09 / 2009
Low-Income Adults Under Age 65 — Many are Poor, Sick, and Uninsured
Sponsoring organization: Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured
Focuses on the low-income adult population, a group of over 50 million who are at
high risk of losing their health insurance coverage or are already uninsured.
Date: 06 / 2009
Profile of Rural Health Insurance Coverage: A Chartbook
Author(s): Jennifer D. Lenardson, Erika C. Ziller, Andrew F. Coburn, Nathaniel J. Anderson
Sponsoring organization: Maine Rural Health Research Center
Provides information on the health insurance
status of rural Americans under the age of 65. Includes recent estimates and changes since 1997 in rural health insurance coverage; differences in the demographic, socio-economic, employment and other risk factors for uninsurance among rural and urban residents; demographic and economic characteristics and employment differences of the rural and urban uninsured; and policy implications for covering the rural uninsured.
Date: 06 / 2009
Rural Coverage Gaps Decline Following Public Health Insurance Expansions
Author(s): Ericka Ziller, Andrew Coburn
Sponsoring organization: Maine Rural Health Research Center
Assesses how uninsured rates and sources of coverage have changed since the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) was enacted. Compares the health insurance coverage of rural and urban residents in 1997 and 2005. Discusses implications for health insurance reform
Date: 02 / 2009
Rural Residents More Likely to be Underinsured
Sponsoring organization: Maine Rural Health Research Center
Multiple studies have demonstrated that rural residents, particularly those living far from urban areas, have high uninsured rates. However, even those with private health insurance coverage can be at risk of having high out-of-pocket health care costs. Understanding the degree to which rural residents are "underinsured" has important implications for rural health policy and practice.
Date: 2006
Rural Workers Would Benefit from Unemployment Insurance Modernization
Author(s): Anne Shattuck
Sponsoring organization: Carsey Institute
Suggests that rural workers can benefit if states adjust their unemployment insurance plans to include part-time employees because, on average, there is a higher number of part-time employees in rural areas.
Date: 05 / 2009
Rural-Urban Comparison of a Building Blocks Approach to Covering the Uninsured (Policy Brief)
Author(s): Timothy McBride
Sponsoring organization: RUPRI Center for Rural Health Policy Analysis
Uses a health insurance model to compare the effects of a building blocks approach on health insurance coverage and health spending, focusing on the geographic differences (by metropolitan and non-metropolitan) of this approach.
Date: 06 / 2009
State of the States: Charting a Course
Author(s): Enrique Martinez-Vidal, Isabel Friedenzohn, Shelly Ten Napel, Anne Bulchis, Colin McGlynn
Sponsoring organization: Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
Reviews the full range of individual state activity on health reform during 2008 and provides facts about the number and percent of uninsured Americans.
Date: 01 / 2009
Study Shows Uninsured Receive Less Care and Experience Worse Outcomes
Author(s): Jack Hadley
Sponsoring organization: American Medical Association
Documents that people who are uninsured receive less care and have worse outcomes following an accident or the onset of a new chronic condition than those with insurance.
Date: 03 / 2007
Trends in Uninsurance Among Rural Minority Children: Key Facts
Sponsoring organization: South Carolina Rural Health Research Center
This is the Key Facts from the report. While efforts to reduce the number of children lacking health insurance, such as SCHIP,
have demonstrated much success, there continue to be pronounced disparities among both minority and
rural children in having health insurance coverage.
Date: 2005
Uninsured and Medicaid Patients’ Access to Preventive Care: Comparison of Health Centers and Other Primary Care Providers
Author(s): Avi Dor, Yuriy Pylypchuck, Peter Shin, Sara Rosenbaum
Examines health centers’ role in reducing disparities in preventive health care access by medically vulnerable and high risk populations.
Date: 08 / 2008
Uninsured and the Difference Health Insurance Makes
Sponsoring organization: Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured
Describes the characteristics of the uninsured population, the difference health insurance makes, and why there is a large uninsured population.
Date: 09 / 2009
Uninsured: A Primer; Key Facts About Americans Without Health Insurance
Sponsoring organization: Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured
Reviews the basic profile of the uninsured population, how they receive care, the latest trends in health insurance coverage, and what the options are for increasing coverage.
Date: 10 / 2009
Why Rural America Needs a Public Health Insurance Plan
Author(s): Jon M. Bailey
Sponsoring organization: Center for Rural Affairs
Examines arguments for a public health insurance plan, how the public health insurance plan would address the health care challenges that exist for rural areas, and how the choice of a public health insurance plan option is important to the viability of rural America.
Date: 07 / 2009
Organizations
Center for Studying Health System Change (HSC)
Nonprofit/Foundation
Works to inform health care decision makers about changes in the health care system at both the local and national levels and the effects of such changes on people.
Community Voices for the Uninsured
National organization
Comprised of eight sites across the country, and launched by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, this is a group of national, community-based demonstration projects which seek to develop programs to improve people's accessibility to quality health care. Includes work in the areas of health insurance, workforce development, plus children's, men's, women's, prison, oral, mental, and general health.
Economic Research Initiative on the Uninsured (ERIU)
Academic/Research
Initiates, commissions, and disseminates original research to spark new discussions on health coverage issues. Located at the University of Michigan and funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured
Nonprofit/Foundation
Provides information and analysis on health care coverage and access for the low-income population, with a special focus on Medicaid's role and coverage of the uninsured.
Pretty in Pink Foundation
Nonprofit/Foundation
A North Carolina 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that provides financial assistance, resources, and support to underinsured/uninsured people diagnosed with breast cancer who reside in North Carolina.
Research Data Assistance Center (ResDAC)
Federal government
Provides free assistance to academic and non-profit researchers interested in using Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP, and Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey (MCBS) data for research.
State Health Access Data Assistance Center (SHADAC)
State/regional organization
Helps states monitor rates of health insurance coverage and understand factors associated with uninsurance. Provides policy analysis and technical assistance to states that are conducting their own health insurance surveys and/or using data from national surveys.
Terms & Acronyms
CMS (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) Federal agency responsible for the Medicare and Medicaid programs. Part of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services.
Medicaid Federal assistance program that helps pay for medically necessary services for needy and low income individuals. The program uses state and federal funds to compensate medical providers serving these populations.
Medicare Federal health care insurance program for most adults age 65 and older and certain disabled individuals. It pays for long term care under limited circumstances and for limited periods of time.
Safety Net Support for healthcare. External support consists of local taxes, state and federal aid, and private programs or donations. Internal strategies adopted by health care facilities include increasing or stabilizing the supply of physicians in the community, changing the scope of services, forging cooperative relationships with other rural providers, and merging with providers outside the community.
SCHIP (State Children's Health Insurance Program) A State and Federal partnership to help children without health insurance, many of whom come from working families with incomes too high to qualify for Medicaid but too low to afford private health insurance.
Underinsured People with public or private insurance policies that do not cover all necessary medical services, resulting in out-of-pocket expenses that exceed their ability to pay.
