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Is Health Insurance Good for Your Financial Health?

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Abstract

What is the purpose of health care? What is the purpose of health insurance? When people fall ill, they seek health care in order to get better. But insurance has a slightly different function: Its main role is not to protect our health per se, but to protect our finances. For most people, lifetime health expenditures are quite low. However, some people have enormous health costs owing to major illnesses or health conditions. And this is where health insurance comes in?its goal (like that of any other form of insurance) is to protect these individuals against large, and sometimes ruinous, health expenditures. Has the recent health reform served this purpose?

Suggested Citation

  • Nicole Dussault & Maxim L. Pinkovskiy & Basit Zafar, 2016. "Is Health Insurance Good for Your Financial Health?," Liberty Street Economics 20160606, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fednls:87135
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Affordable Care Act; Medicaid; Consumer Credit Panel; collections;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D1 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior

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