Publications on Health Insurance

U.S. public policy has increasingly been conceived, debated, and evaluated through the lenses of politics and ideology. The fundamental question--Will the policy work?--too often gets short shrift or even ignored. A remedy is evidence-based policy -- a rigorous approach that draws on careful data collection, experimentation, and both quantitative and qualitative analysis to determine what the problem is, which ways it can be addressed, and the probable impacts of each of these ways. Examples of how evidence informs good policy and lack of evidence can invite bad include health insurance coverage, welfare reform, sentencing policy, and redress for housing discrimination.

This brief examines the dental access problems experienced by adults ages 19 to 64 in families with incomes at or below 200 percent of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL) using the 2005 Kaiser Low-Income Coverage and Access Survey. This report finds that both dental coverage and access to care are limited for low-income adults and that even low-income adults with dental coverage are not getting sufficient levels of needed dental care.

Only 37 percent of adults in low-income working families had employer-sponsored health insurance and 42 percent had no coverage. Health care costs are also rapidly rising out of reach for even middle-income Americans. In this essay, Perry and Blumberg propose comprehensive reform that ensures coverage for everyone at every income level, while still encouraging work. Their proposals include state purchasing pools, individual mandates, and strategies for reducing health care costs.

Only 37 percent of adults in low-income working families had employer-sponsored health insurance and 42 percent had no coverage. Health care costs are also rapidly rising out of reach for even middle-income Americans. In this summary, Perry and Blumberg propose comprehensive reform that ensures coverage for everyone at every income level, while still encouraging work. Their proposals include state purchasing pools, individual mandates and strategies for reducing health care costs.

This paper is a response to New Safety Net Paper 2, "Making Work Pay II: Comprehensive Health Insurance for Low-Income Working Families," by Cynthia D. Perry and Linda J. Blumberg.