A Penn Memorial Symposium To Honor The Late Buz Cooper
Primary Care Appointment Availability for Medicaid Patients: Comparing Traditional and Premium Assistance Plans
In 2014, Arkansas and Iowa expanded their Medicaid programs and enrolled many of their adult beneficiaries in commercial Marketplace plans. This study suggests that this “private option” may make it easier for new Medicaid patients to get primary care appointments.
Why Shopping for Health Care is Hard
[cross-posted from the Health Cents blog on Philly.com]
As health care costs increase, consumers are being asked to manage more of their own health care spending. One of the most common ways this is happening is through high deductible health insurance plans.
Impact of Medicare Advantage Prescription Drug Plan Star Ratings on Enrollment Before and After Implementation of Quality-Related Bonus Payments in 2012
In PLOS ONE, LDI Senior Fellows Pengxiang Li and Jalpa Doshi examine the impact of the Medicare Advantage Presciption Drug Plan star ratings before and after 2012, when they became tied to bonus payments. Does an increase in a plan’s star rating have a direct impact on concurrent year plan enrollment? What’s the indirect impact (via bonus payments) of star ratings on subsequent year plan enrollment?
Show Me the Money: Economic Evaluations of Opioid Use Disorder Interventions
This Issue Brief discusses treatments for opioid use disorders and summarizes a new systematic review of economic evaluations of these interventions. The review reveals strong evidence that methadone maintenance therapy is an economically advantageous form of treatment; the economic evidence for buprenorphine and naltrexone treatments is more limited.
New York Times Spotlights Penn 'Narrow Networks' Research
Medicine's Most Perplexing Challenge: Addressing Unhealthy Behaviors
Common and Costly Hospitalizations Among Insured Young Adults Since the Affordable Care Act
Alexander Bain, Charlene Wong, Gail Slap, Daniel Polsky, Raina Merchant, Yaa Akosa Antwi, David Rubin, Carol Ford
In the Journal of Adolescent Health, Alexander Bain and colleagues, including Charlene Wong, Daniel Polsky, Raina Merchant, and David Rubinm, identify the most prevalent and costly inpatient hospitalizations in a national cohort of privately insured young adults since the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. The researchers analyzed 158,777 hospitalizations among 4.7 million young adults from January 2012 to June 2013. They find that the top diagnoses for young adult female hospitalizations were pregnancy related (71.9%) and mental illness (8.9%). The top diagnoses for young...
The Murky Benefits of Price Transparency
Price transparency—the ability to know the price of something before buying—is a mainstay of most markets. It has been touted as a way to reduce health care spending by enabling a new breed of cost-conscious consumers to comparison shop for care. A new JAMA study suggests that it might not be that simple.
LDI 2016 Health Insurance Exchanges Conference Photo Page
Hospital Market Power Drives Private Payer Prices
The cost of private health insurance, the main mechanism by which people access and pay for health care, is high and rising. In fact, the average family spends more than $17,000 annually on health insurance premiums (KFF). That is, even when a family consumes no health care, they are buying the equivalent of a base-model Toyota Corolla in health insurance every year.
Why Mark Pauly Decided Against Long-Term Care Insurance
For Third Enrollment Period, Marketplaces Expand Decision Support Tools to Assist Consumers
In Health Affairs, Charlene Wong and colleagues go shopping on the most recent iteration of ACA marketplaces. They find added features to help consumers browse and pick a health plan, including total cost estimators and provider look-up tools. Marketplaces differ in how they estimate out-of-pocket costs and how they display plan choices, although most continue to present plans in premium order.
High Cost Sharing and Specialty Drug Initiation Under Medicare Part D: A Case Study in Patients With Newly Diagnosed Chronic Myeloid Leukemia
Does high cost sharing in Medicare Part D drug plans affect whether and how quickly patients initiate a recommended and life-extending drug treatment? In American Journal of Managed Care, LDI Senior Fellows Jalpa Doshi, Pengxiang Li and colleagues assess whether Medicare patients newly diagnosed with chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) and subject to significant coinsurance, take longer to initiate tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKI) treatment than low-income (subsidized) Medicare patients subject to a nominal copayment.