qotd: Economic crises and cost sharing don't mix

National Bureau of Economic Research

Working Paper 15843

March, 2010

The economic crisis and medical care usage

By Annamaria Lusardi, Daniel J. Schneider, Peter Tufano

We use a unique, nationally representative cross-national dataset to document the reduction in individuals' usage of routine non-emergency medical care in the midst of the economic crisis. A substantially larger fraction of Americans have reduced medical care than have individuals in Great Britain, Canada, France, and Germany, all countries with universal health care systems. At the national level, reductions in medical care are related to the degree to which individuals must pay for it, and within countries are strongly associated with exogenous shocks to wealth and employment.

http://www.nber.org/papers/w15843

Comment:  This five-nation study of the impact of the financial crisis on usage of routine medical care demonstrates that both a decline in employment and a decline in wealth are strongly associated with reductions in medical care. But once again, the United States is an outlier.

U.S. citizens pay the highest out-of-pocket amounts for health care, and therefore were two to five times more likely than Europeans to reduce their use of health care. In difficult economic times, higher cost sharing has a greater negative impact on health care access.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) will intensify this problem because most of the subsidized private plans will have low actuarial values, requiring larger deductibles, higher coinsurance (percentage of costs paid by the patient), and higher copayments (dollar amount paid by the patient).

The health care financing system should be designed to allow individuals to have the health care that they need without exposing them to financial hardship, and that protection certainly should extend into times of economic crises. 

Now that PPACA has established underinsurance as the norm, we can anticipate greater reductions in necessary care, especially during difficult economic times. Or instead we could ensure that people receive the care that they need by replacing our financing system with a single payer national health program. As voters, it's our choice.