After going thru a major spring office cleaning and overhaul, I found a really intriguing report buried under books and papers. Well, intriguing for health care geeks…
The combination of two statistics adds a lot of clarity to the US health insurance picture. The two, health care inflation and the uninsured rate, have been combined into the HEMI (healthcare economic misery index). The HEMI is both descriptive and revealing, especially when tracked over time and used to compare states.
HEMI was developed by a UConn Business School professor, Rexford Santerre (what a great name). Dr. Santerre did not just develop the metric, he the examined the underlying factors to try to figure out how they relate to the HEMI. Here’s a few interesting factoids.
1. HMO penetration is associated with lower cost increases – perhaps demonstrating that private insurers actually can control costs.
2. The percentage of the population who were Hispanic was “the strongest single explanatory variable” predicting uninsurance; a 1% difference in the percentage of Hispanics translated to a 1/4 point higher uninsured rate. And yes, this was after controlling for income and number of children.
3. The greater the percentage of the population with jobs, the more significant the cost inflation.
4. Household income was closely linked with uninsurance – for each additional $1000 in income, the uninsured rate declined by 0.2%.
Overall, the HEMI picture is revealing – the lowest misery rates are in the eastern Midwest and New England; while the southern border states are in rough shape, with Texas the worst of the worst.
What does this mean for you?
A clearer picture of the variables associated with uninsurance and health care inflation can help us understand what policies may reduce both.
