Archive | What We’re Reading

Early Estimations On National Take-Up From 2003 MMA And Future Policy Proposals

This technical report builds upon an existing effort supported by The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The objective of this analysis is to produce estimates of coverage and costs of alternative HSA scenarios by: (1) developing an analytic database that uses information from the 2001 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) as well as existing employer-based data […]

Accountable Care Organizations: Back to the Future?

Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) are networks of providers that assume risk for the quality and total cost of the care they deliver. Public policymakers and private insurers hope that ACOs will achieve the elusive “triple aim” of improving quality of care, improving population health, and reducing costs. The model is still evolving, but the premise […]

Favorable Selection, Risk Adjustment, and the Medicare Advantage Program

Payment generosity and more sophisticated risk adjustment were associated with substantial increases in MA enrollment and decreases in disenrollment. Claims experience of those newly switching into MA was not affected by any of the policy reforms, but disenrollment became increasingly concentrated among high-cost beneficiaries. Read the full study at Health Services Research here.

The Effects of Premium Changes on ALL Kids, Alabama’s CHIP Program

The increases in premiums and copays are estimated to have reduced program renewals by 6.1 to 8.3 percent depending upon how much time one allows for families to renew. Families with a child who has a chronic condition were more likely to renew coverage. However, those with chronic conditions, African-Americans and those with lower family […]

Alternative Budgetary Analysis Of The Patient Protection And Affordable Care Act

The federal government faces a daunting fiscal outlook, which makes the budgetary impact of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act even more important. The official Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analysis indicates modest deficit reduction over the next ten years and beyond. Holtz-Eakin and Ramlet examine the underpinnings of the CBO’s projection and conclude that […]

Medical Malpractice Reform and Employer-Sponsored Health Insurance

Using a variety of empirical specifications, there was no statistically significant evidence that noneconomic damage caps exerted any meaningful influence on the cost of employer-sponsored health insurance. The findings suggest that tort reforms have not translated into insurance savings. Read the full study at Health Services Research here.

Medicare Part D’s Effects on Elderly Patients’ Drug Costs & Utilization

Elderly patients’ utilization in the first year of Part D increased compared with that of near-elderly patients by 8.1% for days’ supply and 4.8% for the number of individuals filling prescriptions, and their OOP costs declined by 17.2%. Although elderly patients’ OOP costs in the second year were reduced an additional 5.8%,days’ supply increased by […]

How Similar Are States’ Medicaid Preferred Drug Lists?

For 42 (38%) of the drugs, there was wide consistency in PDL design, with at least 9 states classifying the drug with the same PDL status. For the other 62% of drugs, there was greater variation, with 2 or more states classifying the drugs differently than the others. Generosity and consistency also varied by therapeutic […]

Consumer Response To A National Marketplace For Individual Health Insurance

The objective of this analysis is to simulate the difference between national and state-specific individual insurance markets on take-up of individual health insurance. First, we reviewed the literature to characterize the state-specific individual insurance markets with respect to state regulations and to identify the effect of those regulations on health insurance premiums. Second, we used […]