Health Insurance's Impact on Individual Health: Research Proposal

This report is a research proposal that investigates the influence of health insurance on individual health. It explores the crucial role of health insurance in enhancing access to healthcare services and improving health outcomes. The report emphasizes the benefits of health insurance, such as better access to medical care and improved health and wellbeing of the general public. The study also acknowledges potential challenges, such as insufficient insurance benefit packages. The research draws on various sources to support its claims, including studies on health insurance and mortality rates, and the impact of public health insurance. The proposal aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of how health insurance contributes to the health and safety of individuals, highlighting the importance of access to healthcare and early diagnosis of diseases. The report also references multiple sources to support its claims and analysis.

Running head: HEALTH INSURANCE 1
Health Insurance
Name
Institution
1

HEALTH INSURANCE 2
Health Insurance
Health insurance is vital in the health and safety of individuals. The main aim of health insurance
is to improve health (Gross & Notowidigdo, 2011). This is because health insurance increases
the quantity of healthcare accessible to patients. This has been proven by the several benefits of
the various medical interventions (Lagomarsino, Garabrant, Adyas, Muga & Otoo, 2012). This
paper is a research proposal on how health insurance affects the health of individuals. Making
health insurance available to everyone aims to achieve several objectives. One of the objectives
is to make health outcomes better (Erlangga, Suhrcke, Ali & Bloor, 2019). Better health
outcomes have a direct influence on the health and safety of all individuals.
It is worth noting that health insurance helps patients in gaining access and entry into health care
systems. Therefore, their health status becomes better due to the availability of medical care thus
enhancing the early diagnosis of diseases ("Access to Health Services | Healthy People 2020",
2020). Health insurance helps in improving the health and wellbeing of the general public.
According to Fan, Yan, Coyte & Yu (2019), health insurance helps in improving the health of
the general population. This is done by improving the financial access to healthcare thus
improving the utilization of healthcare services. It is, however, worth noting that health insurance
may sometimes fail in achieving the desired health gains due to insufficient insurance benefit
packages thus making access to the needed care a little challenging. According to Woolhandler
& Himmelstein (2017), health insurance reduces mortality by making survival longer and thus
improving health outcomes.

HEALTH INSURANCE 3
References
Access to Health Services | Healthy People 2020. (2020). Retrieved 3 March 2020, from
https://www.healthypeople.gov/2020/topics-objectives/topic/Access-to-Health-Services
Erlangga, D., Suhrcke, M., Ali, S., & Bloor, K. (2019). The impact of public health insurance on
health care utilisation, financial protection and health status in low-and middle-income
countries: A systematic review. PloS one, 14(8).
Fan, H., Yan, Q., Coyte, P. C., & Yu, W. (2019). Does public health insurance coverage lead to
better health outcomes? Evidence from Chinese adults. INQUIRY: The Journal of Health
Care Organization, Provision, and Financing, 56, 0046958019842000.
Gross, T., & Notowidigdo, M. J. (2011). Health insurance and the consumer bankruptcy
decision: Evidence from expansions of Medicaid. Journal of Public Economics, 95(7-8),
767-778.
Lagomarsino, G., Garabrant, A., Adyas, A., Muga, R., & Otoo, N. (2012). Moving towards
universal health coverage: health insurance reforms in nine developing countries in
Africa and Asia. The Lancet, 380(9845), 933-943.
Woolhandler, S., & Himmelstein, D. (2017). The Relationship of Health Insurance and
Mortality: Is Lack of Insurance Deadly?. Annals Of Internal Medicine, 167(6), 424. doi:
10.7326/m17-1403