Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
The most common drug class taken among patients aged 18-44 is an antidepressant. Furhter, these relatively young and healthy patients are likely to be the ones who enroll in healht plans within the health insurance exchanges. The question is, how easily can patients access information about antidepressant coverage? According to a recent RWJ report, the…
The Affordable Care Act requires all individuals to be offered the same premium regardless of health status. Although there are some ratings bands based on age and smoking status, most people who purchase insurance on health insurance exchanges receive the same premium for any given insurance product from any given insurance company. The insurance products…
There have many policy initiatives to measure and improve quality of care. For instances, NCQA’s HEDIS measure are the most widely used quality measures among commercial insurers. Since employers generally choose insurance plans for employees (or at least select the menu of insurance options for employees), one would expect that employers would look for high…
Insurance doesn’t have much effect on whether patients receive recommended care: Source: Asch SM, Kerr EA, Keesey J, Adams JL, Setodji CM, Malik S, et al. Who Is at Greatest Risk for Receiving Poor-Quality Health Care? New England Journal of Medicine. 2006;354(11):1147-56. PubMed PMID: 16540615. HT: Ashish Jha of The Health Care Blog.
Perhaps the most important paper on the effect of health insurance on health, spending, and access to care was released this week. Although randomized controlled trials are rare for measuring the effect of insurance, the design of the Oregon Medicaid program introduced random variation into who received Medicaid coverage. The authors write: In 2008, Oregon…
According to an article by Decker, Doshi, Knaup and Polsky (2012), the answer is that Medicare health insurance increases utilization among the uninsured, but the utilization of medical services does not rise to the same level as those who previously had insurance. “Although we do not find statistically significant differences in Medicare expenditures or in…
It is widely known that safety net hospitals provide less intensive care than hospitals whose patient base is mostly commercially-insured. One question is whether safety net hospitals discriminate the care provided based on their patients insurance status. In other words, do commerically insured individuals who visit safety net hospitals receive more care than patients treated…
Many people support malpractice insurance caps. They believe that malpractice insurance award caps will reduce medical costs in two ways: i) by decreasing malpractice premiums and ii) by decreasing the amount of defensive medicine physicians practice to avoid lawsuits. An article by Shirley Svorny, however, argues that malpractice awards are bad medicine. Physicians who are…
Cohen and Siegelman (2009) document empirical research on adverse selection in 5 markets: i) automobile insurance, ii) annuities and life insurance, iii) long term care, iv) crop insurance, and v) health insurance. The presence of adverse selection varies not only across markets, but also within markets depending on the product sold and the type of…
According to an article on TheHill.com, Medicare denies more claims than commercial insurers. “Medicare was the most likely to deny any part of a claim, with a 6.9 percent rate. Aetna was a close second at 6.8 percent while the others ranged from 2.7 percent to 4.6 percent. Coventry Health had the fastest median turnaround…