When you lose your health insurance, you may also lose your primary doctor – and that hurts your health

When you lose your health insurance or switch to a plan that skimps on preventive care, something critical breaks.

The connection to your primary care provider, usually a doctor, gets severed. You stop getting routine checkups. Warning signs get missed. Medical problems that could have been caught early become emergencies. And because emergencies are both dangerous and expensive, your health gets worse while your medical bills climb.

As gerontology researchers who study health and…