title: Do medical out-of-pocket expenses thrust families into poverty?
abstract: This paper estimates the impact of medical out-of-pocket expenses on families' well-being using the Survey of Income and Program Participation. Medical out-of-pocket expenses include the out-of-pocket costs from medical services and the family's share of health insurance premiums. Demographic characteristics, insurance status, and medical usage of the family are analyzed to determine which characteristics are most likely to impoverish a family. Families impoverished because of medical out-of-pocket expenses are far more likely to have older heads of the family, at least one family member in poor health, or some adults without health insurance. Families without at least one person who worked full time for the entire year were also likely to be impoverished. However, children in the family had little effect on the probability that the family became impoverished. This odd result is probably due to the high correlation between parental health insurance coverage and the health insurance coverage of their children.
authors.affiliation: Social Security Administration, Baltimore, MD, USA. Brett.OHara@ssa.gov
authors.forename: Brett
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: O'Hara
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D002648:Child; D003710:Demography; D005190:Family; D005382:Financing, Personal / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006264:Health Benefit Plans, Employee / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D017048:Health Care Costs; D005102:Health Expenditures / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D006302:Health Services Research; D006801:Humans; D019458:Insurance Coverage / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D008875:Middle Aged; D011203:Poverty / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D011336:Probability; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D014481:United States