Not an Absolute Measure to Monitor New Hampshire Health Insurance

Not an Absolute Measure

The suggested proxy measure is not a measure of the absolute rate of uninsurance in the New Hampshire population for a number of reasons:

• hospital discharges include some residents of other states and do not include the discharges of New Hampshire residents from out-of-state hospitals
• the age distribution of hospital patients is not the age distribution of the general population and insurance status is related to age
• inpatient discharges, by definition, represent the most acutely ill persons in the population.

In other words, the hospital discharge data will not measure precisely how many people are uninsured in New Hampshire, but changes in the percentage of "self-pay" discharges each quarter will give a reasonably accurate picture of the degree to which the uninsurance rate is rising or falling. The tool is analogous to a water mark on a pier or dock: an observer can tell if the tide is coming in or going out, even if he can't tell exactly how deep the water is.