Getting Behind the Numbers on Access to Care

A national telephone survey, conducted by researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health, the Kaiser Family Foundation and the National Opinion Research Center, of 3,993 randomly selected U.S. adults between February and April 1995. The questions probed for three events in the prior year: an episode of being uninsured, problems getting medical care, and/or problems paying medical bills. The 1,234 adults (31% of respondents) who said they had at least one of the three events were asked to provide verbatim descriptions of the consequences of these events on their physical or mental health,family relationships, employment, and household finances. Available are: a reprint of the article “Whatever Happened to the Health Insurance Crisis? Voices from a National Survey”, from The Journal of the American Medical Association, Oct. 23-30, 1996, which discusses the study, charts summarizing key findings, and a report of the verbatim responses.