Preventative Care4Neighbors

People without health insurance do not get the care they need and are more likely to suffer poor health and premature death than people with proper health coverage, according to the Institute of Medicine.

• Long-term studies indicate that, compared to insured adults, uninsured adults have a 25% greater risk of premature death.

• The Institute of Medicine estimates that 18,000 uninsured people age 25-64 die unnecessarily because they lack healthcare access.

The Great Healthcare Divide

There is a great divide in healthcare access and usage between people with insurance and people without.  More specifically:  

• Uninsured adults are less likely to receive recommended preventive and screening services than insured adults, including mammograms and Pap tests for cervical cancer in women, blood tests for colorectal cancer, blood pressure checks for hypertension, and
  cholesterol tests.

• Compared to adults with insurance, when uninsured adults receive screening services, they are less likely to receive them on a timely basis.

• Because they lack timely access to screening services, uninsured adults with cancer (breast, colon, prostate) tend to have poorer outcomes and are more likely to die prematurely than adult cancer patients with insurance. Poor access to screening services results in delayed diagnosis; and survival probability is a function of the stage of the cancer at diagnosis.

• The longer adults under age 65 are without health insurance, the less likely they are to receive preventive services.

Stressing Preventative Care

One of the main goals of Care4Neighbors is to get people into the healthcare system early, before small problems become emergency room problems. We do this by providing members with useful information about preventative care and building-in higher plan discounts for certain preventative care services, such as check-ups and x-rays. 

We believe that by educating consumers about prevention, reducing the financial fear of seeing a doctor, and making access to healthcare professionals easier for uninsured families, we can begin to change the way people think about and utilize the healthcare system in the United States.