BETHESDA, Md. – The number of working-age U.S. adults with major chronic conditions grew by 25 percent between 1997 and 2006, a new study by the Kaiser Family Foundation shows, and for those who are uninsured, access to care eroded substantially.
The study, published online last week in the journal Health Affairs, found that nearly 58 million working-age adults nationwide have at last one of seven major chronic conditions: heart disease, hypertension, stroke, diabetes, asthma, emphysema, and cancer.
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Researchers focused on non-elderly adults with these conditions because their needs make them particularly sensitive to changes in the economy and the health care system, Kaiser said in a news release.
Previous studies have shown that people with chronic conditions account for three-quarters of all personal medical spending in the United States, and the challenges of caring for them are a major concern amid rapidly rising health care costs.
Researchers Catherine Hoffman and Karyn Schwartz analyzed 10 years’ data on access to care measures from the National Health Interview Survey, comparing non-elderly adults with chronic diseases who were uninsured, privately insured, or on Medicaid.
They found 34 percent of the uninsured with serious chronic conditions reported not having a usual source of care, up from 29 percent, and 26 percent hadn’t seen a health professional at all during the year, up from 21 percent. Access to specialized care also declined.
In addition, the study found uninsured and insured alike struggling to cover the cost of prescription drugs. Among the privately insured, 9.5 percent reported having unmet needs for prescription drugs because of cost in 2006, up from 5 percent in 1997. Among the uninsured, it was 33 percent, up from 25 percent.
In the journal article, the researchers say assuring “effective and efficient care” for people with chronic conditions will be crucial to controlling overall health system costs, “because they use the majority of health-care services in this country.”
The Kaiser Family Foundation is a nonprofit, private foundation dedicated to providing information and analysis on health care issues to policymakers, the media, the health care community and the general public. It is not associated with Kaiser Permanente or Kaiser Industries.
Additional information – including the full article, “Eroding Access among Nonelderly Adults with Chronic Conditions: Ten Years of Change” – is available at www.kff.org or www.healthaffairs.org.
