Access to Care

Promises and Prospects For Low-Income AmericansThis book explores critical issues affecting access to health care for low-income Americans by assessing the importance of expansions of health coverage for the poor, the emerging challenges providers who serve low-income and uninsured populations face in a rapidly evolving health care delivery system, and…

A national random survey of 1053 doctors and 768 nurses on their experiences with and attitudes towards health plans. The survey provides quantitative information from doctors and nurses about their non-elderly patients, as well as verbatim descriptions of patient experiences with health plan decisions, including doctors’ judgments on the consequences…

This article, authored by Diane Rowland, Alina Salganicoff, and Patricia Keenan of the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, assesses Medicaid’s contributions as a public financing program for health insurance coverage for the poor over the last three decades. It reviews Medicaid’s impact on the low-income population and discusses…

This fact sheet summarizes the reasons why low-wage workers are less likely to have employer-sponsored health insurance than workers with higher incomes and therefore, are more likely to be uninsured. Fact Sheet

This paper provides a targeted review of Tennessee’s experience providing health care to individuals with special needs under TennCare, its Medicaid managed care initiative. The first part reviews the experience of TennCare Partners, the behavioral health carve-out program created in 1996. The second part reviews how TennCare’s structure affects the disabled and chronically ill.

A growing trend by state legislatures to pass tough regulations on abortion services begs the questions: Do these rules help to ensure the health and safety of abortion patients and the quality of abortion services? Or, as some abortion rights groups have suggested, are they designed to put abortion providers…

Trends in Commercial Plans' ParticipationThis background paper analyzes the trends in commercial plan participation in the Medicaid market by using a database specifically designed for this purpose. It examines changes from mid-1996 to mid-1997 in the types of full-risk plans serving Medicaid Beneficiaries. It also looks at trends through mid-1998…

California’s Undocumented Latino Immigrants: A Report on Access to Health Care Services This report provides the results of a survey of undocumented Latino immigrants in two California counties (Fresno and Los Angeles), including their access to health care services, insurance status, health status, and economic circumstances. Report

Employment-Based Health Insurance Coverage and its Decline:The Growing Plight of Low-Wage WorkersThis background paper examines the increase in uninsured workers and the growing disparity in health insurance coverage between low- and high-wage workers. While a larger proportion of higher wage workers had health coverage in 1996 than a decade before,…

Kaiser Family Foundation/Harvard University School of Public Health: Update on Americans’ Views on the Consumer Protections Debate The Kaiser Family Foundation/Harvard University School of Public Health Update on American’s Views on Consumer Protections in Managed Care is based on findings from the April 1999 Kaiser/Harvard Health News Index. The survey…