Free clinics pay role in defraying cost of care for insured patients

Community clinics are stretching themselves to provide one more service: Helping to defray the out-of-pocket costs of insured patients. Such clinics, often in rural areas, provide patients with drugs and services with co-payments, premiums or deductibles that would otherwise be too expensive, Kaiser Health News reported. Twenty-three percent of adults under the age of 65 with insurance in 2014 were underinsured, according to KHN. Jack Hoadley, a professor at the Georgetown University Health Policy Institute, told the news service that free clinics are "very much needed by people who qualify for insurance subsidies but still can't afford the copays or deductibles to get care." Read the full article at FierceHealthPayer