Population Health Care Practices: An Epidemiologic Study of the Immediate Effects of a Universal Health Insurance Plan

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Abstract
In an analysis of self-perceived utilization of health services by a population, no major change in the use of such services has been noted in the period immediately following a universal health insurance plan as compared to the period immediately preceding its introduction. Among the variables analyzed are medical consultations, hospitalizations, and drug consumption. Plausible explanations lie in the consistency of health care habits, in population perceptions of the real availability of such services, in underreporting of events that depend upon memory, in a time overlap inherent in the study design, and also in the unwillingness or incapacity of a satiated or saturated health care system to respond to demands placed upon it. Data collected later in the history of the development of the health insurance plan might reveal greater differences than have here been reported under conditions where major financial barriers to health care access are absent.

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