Book Review: We’ve Got You Covered: Rebooting American Health Care

Americans have high expectations for healthcare, and sometimes high anxiety over health insurance. Stanford economist Liran Einav and Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist Amy Finkelstein frequently collaborate on research on insurance markets. Last issue, I reviewed their book Risky Business, written with Boston University economist Ray Fisman. Now, Einav and Finkelstein are back with We've Got You Covered, in which they try to answer a question posed by Finkelstein's father- in- law, "What would you propose doing about health insurance coverage?" One source of anxiety over health insurance is being uninsured. Einav and Finkelstein state that 30 million Americans were uninsured in 2019. A second source of anxiety is "insurance uncertainty," which the authors characterize as the "risk of losing coverage." Workers who get fired from their jobs or quit to find better ones lose coverage; divorce may cause a loss of coverage; Medicaid recipients may lose coverage when their earnings rise or when they recover from illness. Medical debt is a third source of anxiety; "In early 2020" the authors report, "there was $140 billion in unpaid medical bills held by collection agencies."