Many serious health problems are preventable and although 70 percent of medical physicians provide charity health care, most uninsured patients don’t have access to the preventive care they need to live healthy lives.
And as the economy falters, working Americans are paying the price, losing their health insurance benefits as businesses cut costs or they completely lose medical insurance if they are laid off.
On top of that, most American teens are not getting the proper amount of preventive medical care services, even though that is the time in a person’s life when many good health behaviors are established.
A recent medical study by the University of California, San Francisco found that 38 percent of teens had a preventive health care visit in the past year.
Family income and medical insurance status affects the amount of preventive medical care received by teens. About 48 percent of those from high-income families had a preventive visit in the past year, compared with 36 from middle-income families and 32 percent from those from low-income families. Teens with private medical insurance were more likely to have received preventive health care in the past year than those who were publicly insured or uninsured.
