Health insurance keeps people healthy and strengthens our economy.
At Kaiser Permanente, we support expanding health insurance, so everyone has it. Unfortunately, millions of people risk losing their coverage.
Potential Medicaid reductions can be wary of low-income people and people with disabilities. From 2025 onwards, advanced premium tax credits that will help people pay their health insurance will expire.
Recently, policymakers have begun to question whether health insurance will improve health. We know the fact that it does.
So let’s take a look at how health insurance works and why it’s so important that everyone has access to it.
How health insurance works
Health insurance spreads medical costs to a large number of people. Healthcare is expensive and often unpredictable, so health insurance protects individuals and families from financial ruin. Also, by covering healthy people when healthy people need less care, health insurance is affordable and accessible for everyone. This economic security benefits society as a whole.
US health insurance is a mix of public and private coverage. People can get health insurance:
- Through their work
- Through government programs such as Medicare and Medicaid
- By purchasing individual policies through government-run health benefits exchanges
Targeted care often includes regular testing, preventive screening, emergency care, prescriptions, and hospital visits.
Many people, especially those with private insurance, pay a shared fund that covers the costs of their care.
