Challenges and Options for Increasing the Number of Americans with Health Insurance

This paper provides an overview of the issues confronting policymakers who want to develop programs to help working Americans obtain health insurance. It sets the stage for the following 10 articles, which detail a variety of proposals to offer subsidies and financial incentives to people so they will purchase health coverage. This paper examines challenges to covering the uninsured, describes principles that should be used in assessing policy proposals aimed at this purpose, and evaluates the main strategies for coverage expansions. The evaluation of proposal categories also provides estimates of the costs and consequences of specific proposals described in the other papers.