Private Health Insurance: Coverage and Financial Experience, 1940-66

PRIK4TE HEALTII INSURANCE in 1966 continued its expansion in the numher of persons and services covered and in premiums and benefit expenditures. ,4hout four-fifths of the population under age 65 have private health insurance coverage of one type or another. IIealth insurance meets more than 70 percent of all consumer expenditures for hospital care hut less than a third of consumer expenditures for all types of personal medical care. In 1966 private health insurance organizations entered on a new role-as fiscal intermediaries under the Federal Government’s program of health insurance for the aged (Medicare). COVERAGE ITp to t,he present, estimates of the number and proportion of the population having health insurance have typically run in terms of persons with some health insurance coverage of hospital care, surgery, and in-hospital physician visits. Private health insurance has now outgrown these conceptions. Today the extent of health insurance can he discussed adequately only in terms of the number and proportion of the population with some coverage of all the main types of personal health care, including at, a minimum: hospital care ; physician services for surgery, in-hospital medical visits, out-of-hospital X-ray and lahoratory examinations, and office and home visits; dent)al care ; out-of-hospital prescribed drugs; visiting-nurse service; private-duty nursing; and care in extended-care facilities and/or nursing homes. For a complete picture, of course, other items of care should he added-for example, hospital outpatient care for accidents and emergency illness; prosthetic appliances (artificial limbs, braces, etc.) ; home health services other than nursing; eye refraction examinations and the provision of eyeglasses ; ambulance service ; and medi