The ACA has reduced racial/ethnic disparities in coverage, although substantial disparities remain. Further increases in coverage will require Medicaid expansion by more states and improved program take-up in states that have already done so.

Context There is growing pressure to avoid hospitalizing emergency department patients who can be treated safely as outpatients, but this strategy depends on timely access to follow-up care. Objective To determine the association between reported insurance status and access to follow-up appointments for serious conditions that are commonly identified during an emergency department visit.

How does health insurance affect health? After reviewing the evidence on this question, we reach three conclusions. First, many of the studies claiming to show a causal effect of health insurance on health do not do so convincingly because the observed correlation between insurance and good health may be driven by other, unobservable factors. Second, convincing evidence demonstrates that health insurance can improve health measures of some population subgroups, some of which, although not all, are the same subgroups that would be the likely targets of coverage expansion policies. Third, for policy purposes we need to know whether the results of these studies generalize. Solid answers to the multitude of important questions about how specific health insurance policy options may affect health seem likely to be forthcoming only with investment of substantial resources in social experiments.

Despite well-documented links between low health literacy, low rates of health insurance coverage, and poor health outcomes, there has been almost no research on the relationship between low health literacy and self-reported access to care. This study analyzed a large, nationally representative sample of community-dwelling adults ages 50 and older to estimate the relationship between low health literacy and self-reported difficulty obtaining care. We found that individuals with low health literacy were significantly more likely than individuals with adequate health literacy to delay or forego needed care or to report difficulty finding a provider, even after controlling for other factors including health insurance coverage, employment, race/ethnicity, poverty, and general cognitive function. They were also more likely to lack a usual source of care, although this result was only marginally significant after controlling for other factors. The results show that in addition to any obstacles that low health literacy creates within the context of the clinical encounter, low health literacy also reduces the probability that people get in the door of the health care system in a timely way.

BACKGROUND: Among the requirements for meaningful use of electronic medical records (EMRs) is that patients must be able to interact online with information from their records. However, many older Americans may be unprepared to do this, particularly those with low levels of health literacy. OBJECTIVE: The purpose of the study was to quantify the relationship between health literacy and use of the Internet for obtaining health information among Americans aged 65 and older. DESIGN: We performed retrospective analysis of 2009 and 2010 data from the Health and Retirement Study, a longitudinal survey of a nationally representative sample of older Americans. PARTICIPANTS: Subjects were community-dwelling adults aged 65 years and older (824 individuals in the general population and 1,584 Internet users). MAIN MEASURES: Our analysis included measures of regular use of the Internet for any purpose and use of the Internet to obtain health or medical information; health literacy was measured using the Rapid Estimate of Adult Literacy in Medicine-Revised (REALM-R) and self-reported confidence filling out medical forms. KEY RESULTS: Only 9.7 % of elderly individuals with low health literacy used the Internet to obtain health information, compared with 31.9 % of those with adequate health literacy. This gradient persisted after controlling for sociodemographic characteristics, health status, and general cognitive ability. The gradient arose both because individuals with low health literacy were less likely to use the Internet at all (OR=0.36 [95 % CI 0.24 to 0.54]) and because, among those who did use the Internet, individuals with low health literacy were less likely to use it to get health or medical information (OR=0.60 [95 % CI 0.47 to 0.77]). CONCLUSION: Low health literacy is associated with significantly less use of the Internet for health information among Americans aged 65 and older. Webbased health interventions targeting older adults must address barriers to substantive use by individuals with low health literacy, or risk exacerbating the digital divide.

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