Policy for Underserved and Uninsured Population Assignment 2022

Running head: POLICY FOR UNDERSERVED AND UNINSURED POPULATION
Policy for Underserved and Uninsured Population
Name of the Student
Name of University
Author’s note

1
POLICY FOR UNDERSERVED AND UNINSURED POPULATION
Introduction
Medically Underserved Populations (MUPs) is used to denote a specific group of
population that lacks adequate access to the primary healthcare services. These groups also
experiences economic, cultural and other linguistic barriers towards availing equitable access in
healthcare. Uninsured population is those who lack basic insurance policies or subsidized
insurance policies in order to avail primary healthcare services. The prime examples of MUPs or
uninsured population include homeless, low-income, Native Americans, migrant farmworkers
and Medicaid-eligible population (Health Resources and Service Administration, 2019). The
following paper aims to analyze the immediate need of the policy designing for the uninsured
and underserved population in the U.S along with the role of the stakeholders in policy designing
Uninsured and medically underserved population
During the year 2017, the total number of uninsured people in the U.S increases to 28.0
million from 27.3 million (2016 data). Working-age adults are the highest contributors of the
medically uninsured population in the U.S. Nearly 84.6% of the uninsured population aged
between 19 to 64 years (United States Census Bureau, 2018). Approximately 1 out of 4
uninsured people are aged in between 26 to 34 years and 1 out of 5 uninsured people are aged in
between 34 to 44 years. Nearly half of all the people who resides without medical insurance are
male (54.6%) and the number is astonishing as in the U.S the percentage of women population is
higher than the male. Nearly 4 out of 10 uninsured population falls under the non-Hispanic white
group. The underserved population is disproportionately concentrated among the people who are
from the ethnic or racial minorities (United States Census Bureau, 2018).

2
POLICY FOR UNDERSERVED AND UNINSURED POPULATION
(Source: United States Census Bureau, 2018)
Need for Addressing the Issue
The underserved population or the populations who are uninsured and resides below the
poverty level suffers from poor health literacy that further creates a gap in understanding the
need of the healthcare service. According to the study conducted by Kaphingst et al. (2016), the
underserved population has limited health literacy along with lower genetic known and lower