How does health insurance affect health? After reviewing the evidence on this question, we reach three conclusions. First, many of the studies claiming to show a causal effect of health insurance on health do not do so convincingly because the observed correlation between insurance and good health may be driven by other, unobservable factors. Second, convincing evidence demonstrates that health insurance can improve health measures of some population subgroups, some of which, although not all, are the same subgroups that would be the likely targets of coverage expansion policies. Third, for policy purposes we need to know whether the results of these studies generalize. Solid answers to the multitude of important questions about how specific health insurance policy options may affect health seem likely to be forthcoming only with investment of substantial resources in social experiments.

中文翻译：

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健康保险对健康的影响。

健康保险如何影响健康？在审查了有关该问题的证据后，我们得出三个结论。首先，许多声称显示健康保险对健康具有因果关系的研究并没有那么令人信服，因为观察到的保险与良好健康之间的相关性可能是由其他不可观察的因素驱动的。第二，令人信服的证据表明，健康保险可以改善某些人群的健康状况，其中一些（尽管不是全部）是可能成为覆盖范围扩大政策目标的同一人群。第三，出于政策目的，我们需要知道这些研究的结果是否具有普遍性。