Understanding Health Inequalities for Uninsured Americans: A Population-wide Survey

Numbers of the uninsured in America have risen in the past few years to more than 40 million people, yet relatively little is known about their health communication behaviors. Data from the 2003 Health Information National Trends Survey (HINTS) were used to analyze the relationship among demographics, health status, health insurance status, online health seeking, and amount of attention paid to various media for health. A random sample of 6,369 Americans indicated several statistically significant differences between the insured and uninsured: the uninsured were more likely younger, less educated, and Hispanic. Findings also indicated that those without health insurance reported being less healthy and more distressed and hold a greater risk perception for cancer, compared with their insured counterparts. Health insurance, when controlling for demographics and health status, explained a statistically significant but small amount of variance in both online health seeking and attention to health messages in various other media.