Abstract
In Reply.— The Health Insurance Experiment showed that people with free medical care use more services. Dr Jonas implies that the increase is temporary and is caused by such people catching up with previously unmet needs. Several results make this unlikely. First, the response to cost sharing was about the same across the three years we have studied. Second, a week-by-week analysis of use shows that people with free care had initial surges only in well and dental care. These surges lasted only 12 weeks and together represented an additional 0.3 episodes per person. 1 The tremendous increases in dentures and spectacles supplied in the early years of the British National Health Service were not seen, presumably because there was much less unmet need in the United States in 1976 than in Britain in 1948. Third, chronic and well care episodes (where unmet needs might be expected) were rarer and
Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callMore From: JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association
Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
