Staying Well: No insurance, no health care?

• Author: Doherty, Brian
• Position: Citings - Brief Article

IT'S LONG BEEN assumed that the 44.2 million Americans who don't have health insurance aren't getting health care. A recent study from the National Bureau of Economic Research casts doubt on this correlation, at least among those who are self-employed.

Princeton economists Craig William Perry and Harvey S. Rosen looked at a sample of 9,552 people, of whom 1,158 (12 percent) were self-employed. In their sample, only 68 percent of the self-employed were insured, compared to 81 percent of the wage-earners. Despite that difference in insurance, they found little significant difference in actual health care use between the two groups.

Contrary to the assumption that no insurance equals no health care use, there was no significant difference between the self-employed and wage-earners when it came to many measures: hospital admissions and stays, cholesterol exams, dental checkups, and mammograms. In the few areas where there was a statistically significant...