Tag Archives: uninsured

Report: Rate of uninsured Americans dropped in every state

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Joseph Burns

About Joseph Burns

Joseph Burns (@jburns18), a Massachusetts-based independent journalist, is AHCJ’s topic leader on health insurance. He welcomes questions and suggestions on insurance resources and tip sheets at joseph@healthjournalism.org.

uninsured-maps-commonwealth

The Commonwealth FundClick to enlarge image.

A new Commonwealth Fund report provides a good New Year marker on the uninsurance rate as a result of the Affordable Care Act. It also in a way offers a challenge to those in Congress who would repeal and replace it.

By 2015, one year after the ACA went into effect, the percentage of uninsured working age Americans fell in every state and the District of Columbia, particularly among those with low incomes who need health insurance the most, the report showed. Continue reading →

Census release provides more data on poverty and the uninsured

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Susan Heavey

About Susan Heavey

Susan Heavey, (@susanheavey) a Washington, D.C.-based journalist, is AHCJ’s topic leader on social determinants of health and curates related material at healthjournalism.org. She welcomes questions and suggestions on resources and tip sheets at determinants@healthjournalism.org.

U.S. Census Bureau

When the U.S. Census Bureau released its annual estimate of income, poverty and health insurance coverage this month, health insurance numbers were front and center. While family finances and the nation’s official poverty rate was stagnant last year, the numbers of those lacking coverage fell. Now newly released regional data offers a chance to tell more layered stories.

The overall findings, which cover 2014, offered a snapshot of how people in the United States are faring amid the first full year that the Affordable Care Act required most people to obtain health insurance coverage or face penalties. It also showed how many are still failing to see gains years after the recession officially ended.

The health care gains clearly stood out in the coverage of the findings from Census, which released its main report on Sept. 16. But peel back the layers and other interesting trends also emerged. One particularly interesting finding was that more women had health insurance last year than men. Continue reading →

CDC survey shows uninsured rate dropping to historic 9.2 percent

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Joseph Burns

About Joseph Burns

Joseph Burns (@jburns18), a Massachusetts-based independent journalist, is AHCJ’s topic leader on health insurance. He welcomes questions and suggestions on insurance resources and tip sheets at joseph@healthjournalism.org.

The uninsured rate among all Americans in the first quarter of this year dropped to 9.2 percent, according to the latest report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics, released Wednesday.

This is estimated to be the lowest rate of all uninsured Americans, of all ages, since 1972, when the center began reporting on that data from the National Health Interview Survey, Reena Flores reported for CBS News. Continue reading →

Reporter finds nonprofit hospital’s suit against uninsured patient was just one of many

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Joseph Burns

About Joseph Burns

Joseph Burns (@jburns18), a Massachusetts-based independent journalist, is AHCJ’s topic leader on health insurance. He welcomes questions and suggestions on insurance resources and tip sheets at joseph@healthjournalism.org.

Dianna Wray

Dianna Wray

In January 2012, EMTs took Ignacio Alaniz by helicopter to Memorial Hermann Hospital, one of the largest nonprofit medical centers in Texas. Alaniz had been working underneath his Buick Century, trying to get it started. When it rolled over him, he suffered a punctured lung, nine fractured ribs and a broken arm.

“By the time the helicopter landed, he was already $12,196.37 in debt,” wrote Dianna Wray, a staff writer for the Houston Press. Her article about Alaniz, “Getting Stuck: Uninsured Patients Slammed with Lawsuits by Not-for-Profit Hospital,” was recognized as one of the best examples of health journalism in the business (small) category in AHCJ’s Awards for Excellence in Health Care Journalism. In a new “How I did it” article, Wray explains how her reporting led her to many more cases of patients being sued for medical debt and some of the reaction the story generated. Continue reading →

Dallas Ebola case raises questions about care for the uninsured

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Joseph Burns

About Joseph Burns

Joseph Burns (@jburns18), a Massachusetts-based independent journalist, is AHCJ’s topic leader on health insurance. He welcomes questions and suggestions on insurance resources and tip sheets at joseph@healthjournalism.org.

"Ebola virions" by See Source - Charting the Path of the Deadly Ebola Virus in Central Africa. PLoS Biol 3/11/2005: e403 doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0030403. Licensed under CC BY 2.5 via Wikimedia Commons.

“Ebola virions” from “Charting the Path of the Deadly Ebola Virus in Central Africa.” PLoS Biol 3/11/2005: e403 doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0030403. Licensed under CC BY 2.5 via Wikimedia Commons.

When Thomas Eric Duncan died Wednesday of Ebola at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, one of many questions that remained unanswered was why the hospital didn’t do more to diagnose and treat Duncan initially. On Sept. 25, Duncan walked into the hospital’s emergency room, was given antibiotics and sent home, according to coverage in the Los Angeles Times and elsewhere.

The question about what happened on Sept. 25 is important because Duncan could have infected many other individuals between when he was sent home on Sept. 25 and when he returned on Sept. 28 and was put into isolation. Writing in The New York Times, Manny Fernandez and Dave Philipps suggest that Duncan might still be alive if he had been admitted on Sept. 25.

After his death, Duncan’s fiancée, Louise Troh, and other African-Americans, questioned whether Duncan had received substandard care. Continue reading →

Hospitals rethink charity for those passing on Obamacare

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Joanne Kenen

About Joanne Kenen

Joanne Kenen, (@JoanneKenen) the health editor at Politico, is AHCJ’s topic leader on health reform and curates related material at healthjournalism.org. She welcomes questions and suggestions on health reform resources and tip sheets at joanne@healthjournalism.org. Follow her on Facebook.

columbiahospitalThe basic calculation uninsured people had to make this first open enrollment season in the ACA is whether to  get covered – or take the risks of going without health insurance and pay a penalty (unless they are exempt.)

After all, some of them probably figure, they have managed to get discounted or charity care in the past. Why should that change?

It might.

Some hospitals are pondering changes in their policies about how to treat the uninsured, according to an interesting article by Melanie Evans that appears in Modern Healthcare.

The changes they are thinking about won’t affect emergency care; under the Emergency Medical Treatment & Labor Act (EMTALA) hospitals have to stabilize someone coming in with an emergency. But it does affect what they may charge people for care, and how and when they provide non-urgent care.

Continue reading →