Health Care

Massachusetts’ statewide healthcare reform, implemented in 2008, served as a model for the national Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010. Both the state and federal legislation mandated coverage for the previously uninsured and, among other goals, sought to reduce the risk of personal medical bankruptcy.

Every year, traffic accidents kill more than a million people and injure close to 50 million around the world. As tragic and needless as these deaths are, they’re expected to increase over time: By 2020, traffic crashes will be third in the world ranking of burden of disease, as measured in disability-adjusted life years.

For researchers, it has often been difficult to conduct experimental studies on health care outcomes due to biases introduced by differences between insured and uninsured individuals. To produce unbiased data, the ideal circumstance would require the provision of health care to be randomly assigned across a population.

Smoking bans have been found to reduce heart attacks, but how such laws bring about other improved health outcomes is less clear. Little is known about the degree to which bans reduce second-hand smoke exposure, for example.

The impact to human life of alcohol consumption is well documented — in the United States an estimated 79,000 lives are lost annually due to excessive drinking. As terrible as the loss of life is, the full price that society pays is even greater — health care costs rise, property is damaged, productivity is lost, and more.

A 2009 study by the Harvard Medical School and the Cambridge Health Alliance, “Health Insurance and Mortality in U.S. Adults,” looks at the relationship between having health insurance and death rates. The study used data from the CDC’s third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.  The survey was conducted between 1988 and 1994 and involved more than 33,000 people.

Excessive levels of ozone and other air pollutants are costly in many ways, not just to human health. Beyond the direct health care costs resulting from complications, air pollution also imposes substantial burden on public and private health insurers.

Most studies on income inequality have focused on wage earnings inequality, but the usefulness of this approach is limited, some scholars say. What’s missing is the role of non-wage compensation, such as health insurance on the level and distribution of income.