Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
How did Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act impact health insurance coverage, cost and mental health? That is the question asked by Andreyeva, Rochford and Marthey (2025). They use 2011-2019 data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) to examine outcomes for Americans aged 26–54 with at least one child living in the…
One reason are the administrative obstacles and frictions that eligible individuals have to overcome to receive the public services. A paper by Herd and Moynihan (2025) in the Journal of Economic Perspectives provides an overview of the literature. Such burdens are the experience of policy implementation as onerous, and arise via learning costs (knowing about…
One reason is that reimbursement rates for Medicaid are lower than for Medicare or commercial insurance. Another (often overlooked) factor, however, is physician’s risk of payment denials and the administrative hassle they face trying to get reimbursed by Medicaid. A paper by Dunn et al. (2024)–cleverly named “A Denial a Day Keeps the Doctor Away“–shows…
Medicaid policies vary from state-to-state. With the advent of new, GLP-1 medications (and others) to treat obesity and overweight, there are potentially significant health benefits to be gained. However, are State Medicaid Agencies actually covering these medications? This is the question asked by Liu et al. (2024). They use data from public state Medicaid formulary…
A helpful reminder of what rebates are for drugs covered under State Medicaid Agencies. ICER reports in their California, based on a helpful summary from the Kaiser Family Foundation: For brand name drugs, the [Medicaid] rebate is 23.1% of Average Manufacturer Price (AMP) or the difference between AMP and “best price,” whichever is greater. Certain…
Gaining insurance through Medicaid is likely to have diverse impacts in terms of how likely disabled individuals are to work. On the one hand, having access to health care may improve health outcomes and better enabled disabled individuals to recover (if they are short-term disabled) or better manage their disability (if they are long-term disabled).…
According to a recent paper by Wallace (2023), the answer is ‘yes’, but it does so in a highly inefficient manner. Using 2008-2012 Medicaid data from the New York State Department of Health, the author find that: Leveraging the random assignment of over 50,000 Medicaid enrollees in New York, I present causal evidence that narrower…
A Health Affairs Forefront article by Johnson and Dieleman (2022) published last week using the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ (CMS’s) State Health Expenditure Accounts (SHEA) data. A previous study looked at these data through 2014, but the recent publication updates this analysis through 2019. The authors first use a age- and sex-standardized health…
Many people might know that generally the answer is commercial health plans have the most generous reimbursement compared to government plans. However, a key question is how much more do they pay? Commercial vs. Medicare rates A January 2022 report by the Congressional Budget Office finds that commercial payers reimburse hospitals at 223% of Medicare…
Where does the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services see Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) heading in the future. Based on a Health Affairs commentary from Brooks-LaSure and Tsai, the three key priority areas are (1) coverage and access, (2) equity, and (3) innovation and whole-person care. I review each of these…