Does Health Insurance Improve your Health and Lifespan

All of us know that Health Insurance can save us financially, when we need it the most. But does health insurance also affect our health ? After-all the main motive of health insurance should be insuring the health of a person, not the money. When betterhealthfacts.com tried to know if there is any effect of health insurance of overall well being of the insured person or family, some interesting facts were revealed. We were not the only one trying to connect health insurance with health of the insured, but a number of researchers were conducting studies to know the impact.

As we came across a number of studies, one thing was sure that health insurance affects the health and lifespan of insured person in a positive way. We don't know the magnitude of effect, but life expectancy is increased and improved health is the basic reason behind that. Those studies also take into account other factors that affect health and lifespan, such as obesity, smoking, alcohol abuse,  gun violence, environmental hazards and occupational safety, but still the positive impact of health insurance was clearly visible.

Studies supporting the fact:

• A study done by Harvard School of Public Health found a significant decrease in all-cause mortality and increases life expectancy.
• Institute of Medicine conducted a study in 2002 and estimated that death rate (mortality) of uninsured is 25% more that insured people of similar group. According to that estimate 18000 excess deaths occurred per year during those years as 40 million Americans lacked health insurance at that time.
• Medicaid expanded its insurance coverage for pregnant women during 1980s and 90s. It resulted in decreased infant and child mortality.

How does Health Insurance make people healthy ?

• It gives people an emotional support and they know that they won't be under debt if something goes wrong with their health. This emotional support saves them from any psychological disorders.
• Routine medical checkup and screenings that come with Health Insurance make people aware about their increasing weight and blood pressure which may result in diseases like obesity, diabetes and hypertension. People take their health seriously and timely react to keep themselves healthy.
• Routine medical checkup and screenings also help is diagnosing some diseases at early stages, where they can be treated easily and chances of early death are greatly reduced.
• Uninsured people comparatively don't get their disease timely diagnosed, which results in more expenditure and financial dis-balance of whole family and chances of psychological disorders of other family members. During such times other family members also don't take good care of their health. All these factors affect the health of whole family, which starts from a single person.

 While studying the effect of health insurance on health of a person, we found that most studies don't take into account the health of others who are closely related to an insured person. Its obvious that health insurance affects health of an insured person in positive way, but it also positively affects the health of other family members. If your mother or father are in good health, then you can take better care of your own health as well. And if something goes wrong with their health, then your workout schedule and diet pattern gets disturbed and thus affects the whole family's health.

When we ask about health of an insured person then most expected answer is "good" while it is not so in case of an uninsured person. Several factors work behind as mentioned earlier. Getting Health Insurance also means that you are aware about your health and take steps to keep it in good state.

So investing in health insurance policy not only saves tax and financial stability but also saves your health, increases your lifespan and also improves health of your whole family.

Reference: 
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/05/12/stateline-health-insurance-death-rates/8999769/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/09/08/what-we-know-about-how-health-insurance-affects-health/?utm_term=.6e54e03a10d5