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Immigrant-Native Disparities in Perceived and Actual Met/Unmet Need for Medical Care

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Abstract

This study compares the unmet medical needs of foreign-born and U.S.-born adults. Both subjective and objective unmet medical needs are considered, and the roles of duration of U.S. residence, English language proficiency, and state-level destination type in explaining immigrants’ unmet need are assessed. Multivariate analyses of the 2007–2009 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey reveal that immigrants reported less subjective unmet need and equal or greater objective unmet need vis-à-vis natives. Among immigrants only, living less than 5 years in the U.S. and in a new or traditional, high-skill destination state versus a traditional, low-skill state is significantly associated with greater objective, but not subjective, unmet need. While this study reinforces the importance of stable health insurance and, to a lesser extent, income for gaining entry to the formal healthcare system for both immigrants and natives, it also highlights the need to identify factors that influence immigrants’ positive health-related perceptions, including characteristics of the healthcare system in origin countries.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported in part by a grant from the National Institutes of Health (P01 HD062498) and the Thomas F. Morgan Graduate Research Scholarship from the College of Liberal Arts at Penn State University. I would like to thank my Master’s thesis committee, the anonymous reviewer, and Ray Kuntz, who accessed the restricted-use files of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). The research in this paper was conducted at the AHRQ Center for Financing, Access, and Cost Trends Data Center, and the author acknowledges support of AHRQ. The results and conclusions of this paper are those of the author and do not indicate concurrence by AHRQ or the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

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  1. Department of Sociology and Population Research Institute, Pennsylvania State University, 211 Oswald Tower, University Park, PA, 16802-6207, USA

    Stephanie Howe Hasanali

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  1. Stephanie Howe Hasanali
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Correspondence to Stephanie Howe Hasanali.

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Howe Hasanali, S. Immigrant-Native Disparities in Perceived and Actual Met/Unmet Need for Medical Care. J Immigrant Minority Health 17, 1337–1346 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10903-014-0092-x

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