A little health insurance is not much better than none at all, according to a study released Tuesday.
Officially, about 45 million people in the U.S. go without health insurance, but 16 million people pay for limited coverage that puts them in about the same boat financially and medically as those with no insurance at all, the study found.
These “underinsured” individuals are nearly as likely to be the target of medical bill collectors and to forego needed medical care, the study published in the journal Health Affairs found.
“What we are seeing is a health care divide between people who have adequate insurance and those who have inadequate insurance,” said Karen Davis, president of the Commonwealth Fund, a nonprofit health research group that led the study.
The survey was based on 25-minute telephone interviews with about 3,330 adults aged 19 to 64 and conducted during a five month period in 2003 and 2004.
In generally, the underinsured were defined as those spending 5 to 10 percent of their income out-of-pocket on medical care.
Premiums soaring
Health insurance premiums rose 11.2 percent in 2004, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, several times the rate of general inflation.
Employers are increasingly offering more limited and more expensive plans that put a greater financial burden on workers, as they grapple with those costs.
That is blurring the line between the uninsured and those with more limited insurance plans, the study said.
For example, 46 percent of the underinsured and 44 percent of the uninsured were contacted by collection agencies for unpaid medical bills, the study found.
In both groups, about 38 percent of individuals did not fill some prescriptions because of costs.
The two groups also had similar rates of skipping tests, treatments and follow-up care.
