Families with high-deductible health insurance plans are more likely to put off care, study finds

Families who have health plans with high deductibles and who have members with chronic health conditions are far more likely to put off or forgo care entirely due to cost, a study has found. The odds of those families delaying or forgoing care were three to four times more likely than families with traditional plans.

Those were the key findings of a study published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine. Using a mail and phone survey, researchers talked to families with employer-sponsored insurance in Massachusetts between April and December 2008. Respondents included 208 families with high-deductible plans and 370 families with traditional plans.

For adults with high-deductible plans and with incomes less than four times the federal poverty level, the probability they would delay or forgo care was 40 percent. For adults in the same income bracket with traditional plans that probability was only 15.1 percent. (Read more)

Free clinic helps care for poor workers in horse racing industry

People who don't have health insurance but who work at Churchill Downs and elsewhere in the horse racing industry can get free care, thanks to the Kentucky Racing Health Services Center.

"The nonprofit, nurse-managed clinic started as a joint venture between the University of Louisville and the Kentucky Racing Health and Welfare Fund, a non-profit organization that gets its money from when people wager but do not cash their tickets," The Courier-Journal's Laura Ungar reports.

The clinic opened six years ago and helps about 2,500 patients a year. Most earn very low wages; stable-help and groom positions pay between $150 and $250 a week plus housing, equine-related employment service Equimax found.

To be treated, workers must be able to show a valid racing license and be employed in the horse industry. Many of the clinic's patients are Hispanics, who have a disproportionately high number of health issues compared to the rest of the population in part because language barriers can either keep them from getting care or understanding instruction. In Jefferson County, the number of Hispanics has increased — representing 4.4. percent of Jefferson County's population in the 2010 U.S. Census versus 1.8 percent in 2000. (Read more)