Health affairs
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We project the future racial and ethnic composition of the U. S. physician workforce under different assumptions. Our projections show that reaching racial and ethnic population parity with a managed care-based requirement of 218 physicians per 100,000 population would require the number of first-year residents to roughly double for Hispanic and black physicians, triple for Native American physicians, and be reduced by about two-fifths for white physicians and two-thirds for physicians of Asian or Pacific Island origin.
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Using data from a 1992 community survey of children and their parents (or guardians), we found major gaps in mental health insurance coverage. Interestingly, private insurance had no statistically significant effect on use of mental health services. ⋯ The analysis is based on the National Institute of Mental Health's Methods for the Epidemiology of Child and Adolescent Mental Disorders (MECA) study, conducted in three mainland U. S. sites and in Puerto Rico.
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California's uninsurance rate of 22.7 percent is higher than the national average. The state's rate of employment-based insurance coverage--below the national average--is declining because of rising health insurance premiums, falling family incomes, and the changing structure of the economy and the labor market. ⋯ Anticipated cutbacks in federal Medicaid funding, however, would increase California's uninsurance rate. Continuing cutbacks in health services for the uninsured would reduce their access to health care and increase stress on many private health services.