The Health Plan Environment In California Contributed To Differential Use Of Telehealth During The COVID-19 Pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to substantial increases in the use of telehealth and virtual care in the US. Differential patient and provider access to technology and resources has raised concerns that existing health disparities may be extenuated by shifts to virtual care. We used data from one of the largest providers of employer-sponsored insurance, the California Public Employees' Retirement System, to examine potential disparities in the use of telehealth. We found that lower-income, non-White, and non-English-speaking people were more likely to use telehealth during the period we studied. These differences were driven by enrollment in a clinically and financially integrated care delivery system, Kaiser Permanente. Kaiser's use of telehealth was higher before and during the pandemic than that of other delivery models. Access to integrated care may be more important to the adoption of health technology than patient-level differences.

Mandate-based health reform and the labor market: Evidence from the Massachusetts reform.

We model the labor market impact of the key provisions of the national and Massachusetts "mandate-based" health reforms: individual mandates, employer mandates, and subsidies. We characterize the compensating differential for employer-sponsored health insurance (ESHI) and the welfare impact of reform in terms of "sufficient statistics." We compare welfare under mandate-based reform to welfare in a counterfactual world where individuals do not value ESHI. Relying on the Massachusetts reform, we find that jobs with ESHI pay $2812 less annually, somewhat less than the cost of ESHI to employers. Accordingly, the deadweight loss of mandate-based health reform was approximately 8 percent of its potential size.

ACA-mandated elimination of cost sharing for preventive screening has had limited early impact.

OBJECTIVES: The Affordable Care Act eliminated patient cost sharing for evidence-based preventive care, yet the impact of this policy on colonoscopy and mammography rates is unclear. We examined the elimination of cost sharing among small business beneficiaries of Humana, a large national insurer. STUDY DESIGN: This was a retrospective interrupted time series analysis of whether the change in cost-sharing policy was associated with a change in screening utilization, using grandfathered plans as a comparison group. METHODS: We compared beneficiaries in small business nongrandfathered plans that were required to eliminate cost sharing (intervention) with those in grandfathered plans that did not have to change cost sharing (control). There were 63,246 men and women aged 50 to 64 years eligible for colorectal cancer screening, and 30,802 women aged 50 to 64 years eligible for breast cancer screening. The primary outcome variables were rates of colonoscopy and mammography per person-month, with secondary analysis of colonoscopy rates coded as preventive only. RESULTS: There was no significant change in the level or slope of colonoscopy and mammography utilization for intervention plans relative to the control plans. There was also no significant relevant change among those colonoscopies coded as preventive. CONCLUSIONS: The results suggest that the implementation of the policy is not having its intended effects, as cost sharing rates for colonoscopy and mammography did not change substantially, and utilization of colonoscopy and mammography changed little, following this new policy approach.

Adverse Selection and an Individual Mandate: When Theory Meets Practice.

We develop a model of selection that incorporates a key element of recent health reforms: an individual mandate. Using data from Massachusetts, we estimate the parameters of the model. In the individual market for health insurance, we find that premiums and average costs decreased significantly in response to the individual mandate. We find an annual welfare gain of 4.1% per person or $51.1 million annually in Massachusetts as a result of the reduction in adverse selection. We also find smaller post-reform markups.

Health Insurance for "Humans": Information Frictions, Plan Choice, and Consumer Welfare.

Traditional models of insurance choice are predicated on fully informed and rational consumers protecting themselves from exposure to financial risk. In practice, choosing an insurance plan is a complicated decision often made without full information. In this paper we combine new administrative data on health plan choices and claims with unique survey data on consumer information to identify risk preferences, information frictions, and hassle costs. Our additional friction measures are important predictors of choices and meaningfully impact risk preference estimates. We study the implications of counterfactual insurance allocations to illustrate the importance of distinguishing between these micro-foundations for welfare analysis.

The Impact of Health Care Reform on Hospital and Preventive Care: Evidence from Massachusetts(☆).

In April 2006, Massachusetts passed legislation aimed at achieving near-universal health insurance coverage. The key features of this legislation were a model for national health reform, passed in March 2010. The reform gives us a novel opportunity to examine the impact of expansion to near-universal coverage state-wide. Among hospital discharges in Massachusetts, we find that the reform decreased uninsurance by 36% relative to its initial level and to other states. Reform affected utilization by decreasing length of stay, the number of inpatient admissions originating from the emergency room, and preventable admissions. At the same time, hospital cost growth did not increase.

Designing health insurance exchanges: key decisions.

A cornerstone of health care reform is the establishment of state-level insurance exchanges where individuals and small businesses can purchase health insurance in an online marketplace. States are required to develop an exchange by 2014, or participate in a federal one. The exchanges will help people without employer-sponsored insurance find and choose a health plan to meet their needs. This Issue Brief reviews the experience of Massachusetts in developing a health insurance exchange and offers policymakers guidance on key features and likely consumer responses.

The effect of pay-for-performance in hospitals: lessons for quality improvement.

The payment approach known as "pay-for-performance" has been widely adopted with the aim of improving the quality of health care. Nonetheless, little is known about how to use the approach most effectively to improve care. We examined the effects in 260 hospitals of a pay-for-performance demonstration project carried out by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in partnership with Premier Inc., a nationwide hospital system. We compared these results to those of a control group of 780 hospitals not in the demonstration project. The performance of the hospitals in the project initially improved more than the performance of the control group: More than half of the pay-for-performance hospitals achieved high performance scores, compared to fewer than a third of the control hospitals. However, after five years, the two groups' scores were virtually identical. Improvements were largest among hospitals that were eligible for larger bonuses, were well financed, or operated in less competitive markets. These findings suggest that tailoring pay-for-performance programs to hospitals' specific situations could have the greatest effect on health care quality.

Quality and consumer decision making in the market for health insurance and health care services.

This article reviews the literature relating quality to consumer choice of health plan or health care provider. Evidence suggests that consumers tend to choose better performing health plans and providers and are responsive to initiatives that provide quality information. The response to quality and quality information differs significantly among consumers and across population subgroups. As such the effect of quality information on choice is apparent in only a relatively small, though perhaps consequential, number of consumers. Despite the wealth of findings on the topic to date, the authors suggest directions for future work, including better assessment of the dynamic issues related to information release, as well as a better understanding of how the response to information varies across different groups of patients.