Authors: National Association of Community Health Centers 

Publication Year: 2007

Last Updated: 2015-12-28

Journal: National Association of Community Health Centers

Keywords: access to healthcare, medically disenfranchised, uninsured, research

Short Abstract: 

Debate on how to fix the U.S. health care system has reached a crescendo recently, with a host of proposals directly aimed at addressing the nearly 47 million Americans struggling without health insurance coverage and the millions more left underinsured due to changes in employer coverage plans.1 Presidential candidates, along with Members of Congress and health care experts, have put forth varying solutions to the one crisis on which there is little dispute— the lack of affordable health insurance coverage for too many Americans. But expanding health care coverage without addressing the need to provide access to quality preventive and primary care services answers only part of the health care equation. Even if universal coverage becomes a reality in the next decade, there persists the larger problem of the scarcity, and even in some communities the total absence, of preventive and primary health care services. Our research has found 56 million Americans of all income levels, race and ethnicity, and insurance status have inadequate access to a primary care physician due to shortages of these physicians in their communities.

Abstract:

Debate on how to fix the U.S. health care system has reached a crescendo recently, with a host of proposals directly aimed at addressing the nearly 47 million Americans struggling without health insurance coverage and the millions more left underinsured due to changes in employer coverage plans.1 Presidential candidates, along with Members of Congress and health care experts, have put forth varying solutions to the one crisis on which there is little dispute— the lack of affordable health insurance coverage for too many Americans. But expanding health care coverage without addressing the need to provide access to quality preventive and primary care services answers only part of the health care equation. Even if universal coverage becomes a reality in the next decade, there persists the larger problem of the scarcity, and even in some communities the total absence, of preventive and primary health care services. Our research has found 56 million Americans of all income levels, race and ethnicity, and insurance status have inadequate access to a primary care physician due to shortages of these physicians in their communities. They are America’s medically disenfranchised – people at great risk for being unable to establish a medical or health care home to provide them patientcentered, regular and continuous primary care because of a shortage of primary care physicians where they live. The medically disenfranchised are a subset of what many call the “medically underserved” – those that face multiple and compounding barriers to primary care, including lack of insurance and financial difficulty, language and culture, transportation, as well as the lack of physicians present or willing to treat them.

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Source: https://www.graham-center.org/content/dam/rgc/documents/publications-reports/monographs-books/Access%20Denied.pdf