A new paper by Sharma et al. (2017) finds that Medicaid patients living in states with lower Medicaid reimbursement have more challenges accessing primary care services.
We found that states with higher Medicaid fees had higher probabilities of appointment offers and shorter wait times for Medicaid patients, and lower probabilities of appointment offers and longer wait times for uninsured patients. Appointment offers and wait times for Medicare and privately insured patients were unaffected by Medicaid fees.
The authors also find that access differentials vary by beneficiary race. Interesting throughout.
Source:
- Sharma, Rajiv, Sarah Tinkler, Arnab Mitra, Sudeshna Pal, Raven Susu‐Mago, and Miron Stano. “State Medicaid fees and access to primary care physicians.” Health Economics (2017).