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Don't Let the Numbers Fool You

Katherine Swartz, PhD

JAMA. 1994;271(1):64-66.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

IS THE "problem" of people without health insurance really a problem? Opponents of major health care reform argue no. The Wall Street Journal says, "[T]he alleged 37 million uninsured also wilts under analysis.... Studies show that 70 percent of them are uninsured for less than nine months."¹ The Council for Affordable Health Insurance says if everyone were offered a medical savings account, "the numbers [sic] of uninsured could be reduced by as much as 25 million" (from 37 million) because "most (70%) of the uninsured remain without coverage for less than one year."² Statistics that describe dynamics—people moving in and out of a particular condition—can mislead even with the best of intentions. When intentions are not the best, the statistics can totally confuse. I write as one of the researchers who estimated the distribution of uninsured spell lengths that yields the findings that the median spell length is . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Author Affiliations
From the Department of Health Policy and Management, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Mass.

Footnotes
Any opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Urban Institute or any of its sponsors, or Harvard University.

Reprint requests to Department of Health Policy and Management, Harvard School of Public Health, 677 Huntington Ave, Boston, MA 02115 (Dr Swartz).

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