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A long-standing policy prohibits the use of federal funds for Medicaid services in Institutions for Mental Diseases (facilities with more than sixteen beds that specialize in mental health or substance use disorder treatment). Beginning in 2015, states could apply for Section 1115 Medicaid waivers, which permit federal funding for Institutions for Mental Diseases services and require improvements in opioid use disorder (OUD) treatment. Using 2016-20 Medicaid data, we compared changes in the use of medications for OUD and nonfatal overdoses in seventeen states with waivers approved during 2017-19 to changes in eighteen states without waivers. Waiver implementation was not associated with improvements in overall medication treatment, buprenorphine and naltrexone prescribing, or rates of nonfatal overdoses among Medicaid enrollees with OUD. Waiver implementation was associated with a 2.3-percentage-point increase in the use of methadone with waiver implementation, as a result of coverage changes, and a 3.7-percentage-point increase in any medication treatment among Medicaid enrollees diagnosed with severe OUD who had an inpatient or residential stay. Our findings suggest that such waivers adopted by states during 2017-19 were not associated with significant improvements in medication treatment or reductions in nonfatal opioid-related overdoses among Medicaid enrollees with OUD. However, they may have moderately improved the use of medication treatment for those with severe OUD.

Institutional Special Needs Plans (I-SNPs) are a type of Medicare Advantage (MA) plan designed for long-term residents of nursing homes or those who live in the community but need a nursing home level of care. I-SNPs provide for on-site nurse practitioners in nursing homes to help improve primary care, care planning, and care coordination. Our study was the first to undertake a nationwide descriptive analysis of the I-SNP market. The share of long-stay nursing home residents enrolled in I-SNPs quadrupled from 2006 to 2021, from 2.2 percent to 8.8 percent. Despite this growth, nearly 70 percent of nursing homes did not have any residents enrolled in I-SNPs in 2021, and in more than 60 percent of US counties, there were no I-SNPs available. Nearly 94 percent of long-stay nursing home residents who were enrolled in I-SNPs in 2021 were eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid. More research is needed to understand why I-SNPs enter certain markets and why long-stay nursing home residents choose to enroll in them; to assess I-SNP enrollment barriers; and to compare hospital admission rates and quality outcomes among long-stay nursing home residents by I-SNP enrollment status. Increased understanding of I-SNPs could inform policies to address long-standing concerns about the quality of care in nursing homes.

Legislative policies that criminalize immigrants have a "chilling effect" on public program participation among eligible immigrants. However, little is known about the effect of local enforcement actions by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). In this study, we linked county-level data on the number of detainer requests (or immigration holds) issued by ICE to individual-level data from the 2011, 2016, and 2019 American Community Surveys. We fit adjusted logistic regression models to assess the association between detainer requests and enrollment in Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) among those likely eligible for each program in US-born versus immigrant households. A higher volume of detainer requests was associated with lower enrollment in both Medicaid and SNAP, particularly among adults in households with at least one immigrant relative to US-born households. We observed the most pronounced effects in 2011 and 2019.

Over the course of the past twenty years, private equity (PE) has played a role in acquiring medical practices, hospitals, and nursing homes. More recently, PE has taken a greater interest in acquiring dental practices, but few data exist about the scope of PE activity within dentistry. We analyzed dentist provider data for the period 2015-21 to examine trends in PE acquisition of dental practices. The percentage of dentists affiliated with PE increased from 6.6 percent in 2015 to 12.8 percent in 2021. During this period, PE affiliation increased particularly among larger dental practices and among dental specialists such as endodontists, oral surgeons, and pediatric dentists. PE-affiliated dental practices were more likely to participate in Medicaid than practices not affiliated with PE. Future research should investigate whether PE's role in dentistry affects the affordability and quality of dental services.

Children and adolescents with serious emotional disturbance represent 7-12 percent of all youth in the United States. In 2017, the State of Idaho implemented the Youth Empowerment Service program, which allows youth with serious emotional disturbance who are younger than age eighteen living in households with income up to 300 percent of the federal poverty level to qualify for Medicaid and receive intensive, community-based treatment. A uniquely detailed method was used to assess the need for services: the Child and Adolescent Needs and Strengths tool, a ninety-seven-indicator instrument administered by a clinician. We used these indicators and Idaho's 2018-22 administrative Medicaid claims data to study the association between children and adolescents' clinical needs complexity and their actual Medicaid behavioral and mental health service use. Our findings show that there was a substantial proportion of youth who were underusing Medicaid behavioral and mental health care services, and there were virtually no overusers. Our findings have implications for the appropriateness of Medicaid utilization management in behavioral health care and program efforts to maintain families with youth having serious emotional disturbance in the Youth Empowerment Service program.

As people lose Medicaid because of the end of the COVID-19 public health emergency, many states will route former Medicaid managed care enrollees into Affordable Care Act Marketplace coverage with the same carrier. In 2021, 52.1 percent of Medicaid managed care enrollees were enrolled by a carrier that also had a plan on the Marketplace in the same county.

In the Congressional Budget Office's projections of health insurance coverage, 92.3 percent of the US population, or 316 million people, have coverage in 2024, and 7.7 percent, or 26 million, are uninsured. The uninsured share of the population will rise over the course of the next decade, before settling at 8.9 percent in 2034, largely as a result of the end of COVID-19 pandemic-related Medicaid policies, the expiration of enhanced subsidies available through the Affordable Care Act health insurance Marketplaces, and a surge in immigration that began in 2022. The largest increase in the uninsured population will be among adults ages 19-44. Employment-based coverage will be the predominant source of health insurance, and as the population ages, Medicare enrollment will grow significantly. After greater-than-expected enrollment in 2023, Marketplace enrollment is projected to reach an all-time high of twenty-three million people in 2025.

Policy responses to the March 31, 2023, expiration of the Medicaid continuous coverage provision need to consider the difference between self-reported Medicaid participation on government surveys and administrative records of Medicaid enrollment. The difference between the two is known as the "Medicaid undercount." The size of the undercount increased substantially after the continuous coverage provision took effect in March 2020. Using longitudinal data from the Current Population Survey, we examined this change. We found that assuming that all beneficiaries who ever reported enrolling in Medicaid during the COVID-19 pandemic public health emergency remained enrolled through 2022 (as required by the continuous coverage provision) eliminated the worsening of the undercount. We estimated that nearly half of the 5.9 million people who we projected were likely to become uninsured after the provision expired, or "unwound," already reported that they were uninsured in the 2022 Current Population Survey. This finding suggests that the impact of ending the continuous coverage provision on the estimated uninsurance rate, based on self-reported survey data, may have been smaller than anticipated. It also means that efforts to address Medicaid unwinding should include people who likely remain eligible for Medicaid but believe that they are already uninsured.

Remote physiologic monitoring use increased more than 1,300 percent from 2019 to 2021, and use varied by state. This increase was driven by a small number of (predominantly internal medicine) providers. Female beneficiaries, residents of metropolitan areas, and people diagnosed with diabetes or hypertension had the highest rates of use.

States' decisions to expand Medicaid may have important implications for their hospitals' financial ability to weather the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. This study estimated the effects of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) Medicaid expansion on hospital finances in 2017 to update earlier findings. The analysis also explored how the ACA Medicaid expansion affects different types of hospitals by size, ownership, rurality, and safety-net status. We found that the early positive financial impact of Medicaid expansion was sustained in fiscal years 2016 and 2017 as hospitals in expansion states continued to experience decreased uncompensated care costs and increased Medicaid revenue and financial margins. The magnitude of these impacts varied by hospital type. As COVID-19 has brought hospitals to a time of great need, findings from this study provide important information on what hospitals in states that have yet to expand Medicaid could gain through expansion and what is at risk should any reversal of Medicaid expansions occur.

The recent coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) global pandemic has resulted in unprecedented job losses in the United States, disrupting health insurance coverage for millions of people. Several models have predicted large increases in Medicaid enrollment among those who have lost jobs, yet the number of Americans who have gained coverage since the pandemic began is unknown. We compiled Medicaid enrollment reports covering the period from March 1 through June 1, 2020, for twenty-six states. We found that in these twenty-six states, Medicaid covered more than 1.7 million additional Americans in roughly a three-month period. Relative changes in Medicaid enrollment differed significantly across states, although enrollment growth was not systemically related to job losses. Our results point to the important effects of state policy differences in the response to COVID-19.

Expansion of Medicaid and establishment of the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) represent a significant success story in the national effort to guarantee health insurance for children. That success is reflected in the high rates of coverage and health care access achieved for children, including those in low-income families. But significant coverage gaps remain-gaps that have been increasing since 2016 and are likely to accelerate with the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and the associated recession. Using National Health Interview Survey data, we found that the proportion of uninsured children was 5.5 percent in 2018. Children continue to face coverage interruptions, and Latino, adolescent, and noncitizen children continue to face elevated risks of being uninsured. Although we note the benefits of a universal, federally financed, single-payer approach to coverage, we also offer two possible reform pathways that can take place within the current multipayer system, aimed at ensuring coverage, access, continuity, and comprehensiveness to move the nation closer to the goal of providing the health care that children need to reach their full potential and to reduce racial and economic inequalities.

Coverage disruptions and coverage loss occur frequently among Medicaid enrollees and are associated with delayed health care access and reduced medication adherence. Little is known about the effect on churning of the expansion of eligibility for Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which had the potential to reduce coverage disruptions as a result of increased outreach and more generous income eligibility criteria. We used a difference-in-differences framework to compare rates of coverage disruption in expansion versus nonexpansion states, and in subgroups of states that used alternative expansion strategies. We found that among low-income Medicaid beneficiaries ages 19-64, disruption in coverage decreased 4.3 percentage points in the post-ACA period in expansion states compared to nonexpansion states, and there was a similar decrease in the share of people who experienced a period without any insurance. Men, people of color, and those without chronic illnesses experienced the largest improvements in coverage continuity. Coverage disruptions declined in both traditional expansion states and those that used Section 1115 waivers for expansion. Our quasi-experimental study provides the first nationwide evidence that Medicaid expansion led to decreased rates of coverage disruption. We estimate that half a million fewer adults experienced an episode of churning annually.

In 2000-12 payments for inpatient hospital stays, emergency department visits, and outpatient hospital care for privately insured patients grew much faster than payments for Medicare and Medicaid patients. This widening of private-public payment gaps slowed or even reversed itself in 2012-16.

Timely postpartum care is associated with lower maternal morbidity and mortality, yet fewer than half of Medicaid beneficiaries attend a postpartum visit. Medicaid enrollees are at higher risk of postpartum disruptions in insurance because pregnancy-related Medicaid eligibility ends sixty days after delivery. We used Medicaid claims data for 2013-15 from Colorado, which expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, and Utah, which did not. We found that after expansion, new mothers in Utah experienced higher rates of Medicaid coverage loss and accessed fewer Medicaid-financed outpatient visits during the six months postpartum, relative to their counterparts in Colorado. The effects of Medicaid expansion on postpartum Medicaid enrollment and outpatient utilization were largest among women who experienced significant maternal morbidity at delivery. These findings provide evidence that expansion may promote the stability of postpartum coverage and increase the use of postpartum outpatient care in the Medicaid program.

Of the fourteen states that have not expanded eligibility for Medicaid, nine are in the southern census region, and two others border that region. Ongoing debate over the merits of Medicaid expansion in these states has focused, in part, on whether the safety net provides sufficient access for uninsured low-income Americans. We analyzed longitudinal survey and vital status data from the twelve-state Southern Community Cohort Study (SCCS) for 15,356 nonelderly adult participants with low incomes, 86 percent of whom were enrolled at community health centers. In difference-in-differences analyses, we compared changes in self-reported health between participants in four expansion and eight nonexpansion states before (2008-13) and after (2015-17) Medicaid expansion. We found that a higher proportion of SCCS participants in expansion states reported increases in Medicaid coverage (a differential change of 7.6 percentage points), a lower proportion experienced a health status decline (-1.8 percentage points), and a higher proportion maintained their baseline health status (1.4 percentage points). The magnitude of estimated reductions in health declines would meaningfully affect a nonexpansion state's health ranking in our sample if that state elected to expand Medicaid. Our results suggest that for low-income adults in the South, Medicaid expansion yielded health benefits-even for those with established access to safety-net care.

Some policy makers are proposing Medicaid work or community engagement requirements. Using national data, we found that 13.9 percent of new, nonelderly adult Medicaid beneficiaries in 2015-16 had experienced a decline in health before enrollment, and a similar percentage had had jobs that ended before they enrolled. These findings highlight the need for careful design of work requirement policies.

Working families have increasingly enrolled their children in Medicaid or the Children's Health Insurance Program in recent years. Parents' place of employment affects the availability and cost of family health insurance, making it a determinant of pediatric public insurance enrollment. We examined that enrollment in the period 2008-16 in families working full time and earning more than 100 percent of the federal poverty level at three types of employers. Among low-income families (100-199 percent of poverty), children's public health insurance coverage was highest for those with parents employed at small private firms, increasing from 53 percent to 79 percent, while the public insurance coverage rate also increased among children with parents working for large private firms (from 45 percent to 69 percent). Among moderate-income families (200-299 percent of poverty) working at small private firms, public coverage increased from 21 percent to 64 percent. Increases in the number of working families with pediatric public insurance were driven by employees of large private firms. Maintaining high pediatric insurance coverage rates will require policies that recognize the changing role of public insurance for working families as the cost of employer-based coverage grows.

Analyzing national survey data, we found that workers in traditionally blue-collar industries (service jobs, farming, construction, and transportation) experienced the largest gains in health insurance after implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2014. Compared to other occupations, these had lower employer-based coverage rates before the ACA. Most of the post-ACA coverage gains came from Medicaid and directly purchased nongroup insurance.

The benefits of expanding funding for Medicaid long-term care home and community-based services (HCBS) relative to institutional care are often taken as self-evident. However, little is known about the outcomes of these services, especially for racial and ethnic minority groups, whose members tend to use the services more than whites do, and for people with dementia who may need high-intensity care. Using national Medicaid claims data on older adults enrolled in both Medicare and Medicaid, we found that overall hospitalization rates were similar for HCBS and nursing facility users, although nursing facility users were generally sicker as reflected in their claims history. Among HCBS users, blacks were more likely to be hospitalized than non-Hispanic whites were, and the gap widened among blacks and whites with dementia. Also, conditional on receiving HCBS, Medicaid HCBS spending was higher for whites than for nonwhites, and higher Medicare and Medicaid hospital spending for blacks and Hispanics did not offset this difference. Our findings suggest that home and community-based services need to be carefully targeted to avoid adverse outcomes and that the racial/ethnic disparities in access to high-quality institutional long-term care are also present in HCBS. Policy makers should consider the full costs and benefits of shifting care from nursing facilities to home and community settings and the potential implications for equity.

Work requirements condition Medicaid eligibility on completing a specified number of hours of employment, work search, job training, or community service. Little is known about how behavioral health and other chronic health conditions intersect with employment status among Medicaid enrollees who may be subject to work requirements. Using data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health for the period 2014-16, we found that people with behavioral health and other chronic health conditions were more likely to be enrolled in Medicaid and subject to work requirements than those without any identified health conditions. Furthermore, among Medicaid enrollees, those with behavioral and other health conditions were also less likely to have worked twenty hours or more in the past week (and thus be more unlikely to meet work requirements). Our findings suggest that people who may be subject to the requirements have an elevated prevalence of behavioral and other chronic health conditions. If work requirements are to be a continued piece of Medicaid policy, policy changes must also be adopted to ensure that Medicaid covers a full continuum of evidence-based behavioral health services and that Medicaid enrollees with work-limiting conditions are given reasonable accommodations and exemptions.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is increasingly focused on value-based payment programs, which tie payment to performance on quality and cost measures. In this context, there is rising concern that such programs systematically disadvantage providers that care for vulnerable populations, such as the poor, by holding the providers accountable for factors beyond their control that influence patient outcomes and utilization. In this nationally representative study of Medicare beneficiaries, we found that dually enrolled Medicare beneficiaries (those also enrolled in Medicaid) had strikingly higher levels of medical, functional, and cognitive comorbidities, as well as social needs, compared to their non-dually enrolled counterparts. Dual enrollees also had significantly higher annual costs of care. Including functional, cognitive, and social factors in cost prediction, in addition to risk factors derived from medical claims, improved risk prediction and decreased differences between dual and nondual enrollees. Medicare could consider such adjustment to improve accuracy and fairness in value-based payment programs.

Overall mortality rates, adjusted for age, sex, and Medicaid status, in Medicare Advantage have been below those in traditional Medicare for many years. Much attention has been paid to the resulting issue of favorable selection in Medicare Advantage. The common study design used to estimate causal effects of Medicare Advantage on utilization and outcomes compares new Medicare Advantage beneficiaries immediately before and after enrollment in Medicare Advantage with beneficiaries who choose to remain in traditional Medicare. What has not been studied is the mortality experience of a cohort that initially chooses enrollment in Medicare Advantage versus one that chooses traditional Medicare. In this study we found that the adjusted mortality rate of a cohort newly enrolled in Medicare Advantage was initially well below that of a cohort newly enrolled in traditional Medicare, but the difference markedly decreased after five years. As a result, the common study design is flawed because it assumes that any initial difference in mortality risk remains constant after enrollment in Medicare Advantage. In other words, those initially choosing Medicare Advantage become sicker relative to traditional Medicare beneficiaries over five years. Whether the mortality rates would fully converge if a period longer than five years were observed is a topic for further research.

West Virginia is at the epicenter of a national opioid crisis, with a 2016 fatal opioid overdose rate of 43.4 per 100,000 population-more than triple the US average. We used claims data for 2014-16 to examine trends in treatment for opioid use disorder (OUD) among people enrolled in the West Virginia Medicaid expansion program under the Affordable Care Act. Expanding Medicaid could provide services to populations that may previously have had limited access to OUD treatment. We thus sought to understand trends over time in OUD diagnosis and treatment, especially with medications. About 5.5 percent of all enrollees were diagnosed with OUD per year, and the monthly prevalence of OUD diagnoses nearly tripled during this three-year period. The ratio of people filling buprenorphine to the number diagnosed with OUD was around one-third in early 2014, increasing to more than 75 percent by late 2016. Mean annual duration of filled buprenorphine increased from 161 days in 2014 to 185 days in 2016, and most people filling buprenorphine also received counseling and drug testing during the study period. The growing use of medication treatment for OUD in the West Virginia Medicaid expansion population provides an opportunity to reduce overdose deaths.

National health expenditures are projected to grow at an average annual rate of 5.5 percent for 2018-27 and represent 19.4 percent of gross domestic product in 2027. Following a ten-year period largely influenced by the Great Recession and major health reform, national health spending growth during 2018-27 is expected to be driven primarily by long-observed demographic and economic factors fundamental to the health sector. Prices for health care goods and services are projected to grow 2.5 percent per year, on average, for 2018-27-faster than the average price growth experienced over the last decade-and to account for nearly half of projected personal health care spending growth. Among the major payers, average annual spending growth in Medicare (7.4 percent) is expected to exceed that in Medicaid (5.5 percent) and private health insurance (4.8 percent) over the projection period, mostly as a result of comparatively higher projected enrollment growth. The insured share of the population is expected to remain stable at around 90 percent throughout the period, as net gains in health coverage from all sources are projected to keep pace with population growth.

The traditional model of primary care practices as the main provider of care for acute illnesses is rapidly changing. Over the past two decades the growth in emergency department (ED) visits has spurred efforts to reduce "inappropriate" ED use. We examined a nationally representative sample of office and ED visits in the period 2002-15. We found a 12 percent increase in ED use (from 385 to 430 visits per 1,000 population), which was dwarfed by a decrease of nearly one-third in the rate of acute care visits to primary care practices (from 938 to 637 visits per 1,000 population). The decrease in primary care acute visits was also present among two vulnerable populations: Medicaid beneficiaries and adults ages sixty-five and older, either in Medicare or privately insured. As acute care delivery shifts away from primary care practices, there is a growing need for integration and coordination across an increasingly diverse spectrum of venues where patients seek care for acute illnesses.

The Over-the-Counter Hearing Aid Act of 2017 will soon allow people to purchase hearing aids without an audiologist or hearing aid dispenser acting as a go-between. Under this new arrangement there will be no guarantee that purchasers with hearing loss will have access to the hearing care services that are often needed to optimize hearing and communication with the devices. Using data for 2013 from the Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey, we examined existing barriers to accessing those services among older Medicare beneficiaries who owned and used hearing aids. Within this population, beneficiaries who were dually eligible for Medicaid had 41 percent lower odds of using hearing care services and were twice as likely to report having a lot of trouble hearing with their aids, compared to high-income Medicare beneficiaries. Existing barriers to device owners' receiving hearing care services are likely to be exacerbated when over-the-counter sales further separate the purchase of hearing aids from payment for supportive services. Coverage of hearing care services under the Medicare program should be considered to address income-related constraints to service access.

Medication treatment (MT) is one of the few evidence-based strategies proposed to combat the current opioid epidemic. We examined national trends and correlates of offering MT in substance use treatment facilities in the United States. According to data from national surveys, the proportion of these facilities that offered any MT increased from 20.0 percent in 2007 to 36.1 percent in 2016-mainly the result of increases in offering buprenorphine and extended-release naltrexone. Only 6.1 percent of facilities offered all three MT medications in 2016. Facilities in states with higher opioid overdose death rates, facilities that accepted health insurance overall (and, more specifically, those that accepted Medicaid in states that opted to expand eligibility for Medicaid), and facilities in states with more comprehensive coverage of MT under their Medicaid plans had higher odds of offering MT. The findings highlight the persistent unmet need for MT nationally and the role of expansion of health insurance in the dissemination of these treatments.

Out-of-pocket spending on health care pushed over 10.5 million Americans into poverty in 2016. Medicaid helps offset this risk by providing medical coverage to millions of poor and near-poor children and adults and thereby constraining out-of-pocket medical spending. This article examines whether recent state-level expansions to the Medicaid program resulted in reductions in poverty and whether future changes to the program are likely to have similar impacts on poverty. Using a difference-in-differences research design, we found that the recent Medicaid expansion caused a significant reduction in the poverty rate. Moreover, by simulating a counterfactual poverty rate for a hypothetical world without Medicaid coverage, we found that the program's antipoverty impact grew over the past decade independent of expansion, by shielding beneficiaries from growing out-of-pocket spending. Future expansions or retractions of Medicaid are likely to produce associated effects on poverty.

In recent years state and federal policies have encouraged the use of telemedicine by formalizing payments for it. Telemedicine has the potential to expand access to timely care and reduce costs, relative to in-person care. Using information from the Minnesota All Payer Claims Database, we conducted a population-level analysis of telemedicine service provision in the period 2010-15, documenting variation in provision by coverage type, provider type, and rurality of patient residence. During this period the number of telemedicine visits increased from 11,113 to 86,238, and rates of use varied extensively by coverage type and rurality. In metropolitan areas telemedicine visits were primarily direct-to-consumer services provided by nurse practitioners or physician assistants and covered by commercial insurance. In nonmetropolitan areas telemedicine use was chiefly real-time provider-initiated services delivered by physicians to publicly insured populations. Recent federal and state legislation that expanded coverage and increased provider reimbursement for telemedicine services could lead to expanded use of telemedicine, including novel approaches in new patient populations.

The Affordable Care Act's Medicaid expansion provisions have been credited with overall improvements in insurance coverage, access to care, and health. However, recent studies have found that racial and ethnic disparities in coverage have persisted in spite of these improvements. We used data for the period 2010-15 from the American Community Survey about adults ages 19-64 to study the impact of Medicaid expansion on insurance coverage among US natives, naturalized citizens and noncitizen immigrants. We found that uninsurance decreased among US natives, naturalized citizens, and noncitizen immigrants after 2013. The percentage of uninsured noncitizens decreased from 69.6 percent in 2010 to 53.5 percent in 2015. However, uninsurance rates remained high for noncitizens in 2015, with 44.9 percent of them uninsured in expansion states, compared to 16.3 percent of natives. A triple-differences analysis suggested that among natives and noncitizens, 5.6 percent and 5.0 percent, respectively, of the drop in uninsurance were attributable to Medicaid expansion. However, decreases in uninsurance among naturalized citizens could not be attributed to Medicaid expansion. Although health insurance coverage improved significantly for natives, naturalized citizens, and noncitizens, substantial disparities in insurance coverage persisted for noncitizen immigrants.

Obtaining health insurance coverage has historically been challenging for workers at small firms and the self-employed. Using data from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, we found that the overall uninsurance rate for these workers and their families declined by 5 percentage points over the past decade, but one-third of those with lower incomes remained uninsured in 2014-15.

Historically, part-time workers have been more likely to be uninsured than their full-time peers. Data from the 2010-15 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey show that coverage differences by work hours declined after 2014. Uninsurance declined more for part-time workers, with pathways to coverage varying by state Medicaid expansion status.

Medicaid provides health insurance to more than seventy million Americans, yet there has been little systematic analysis of what factors influence enrollees' satisfaction with and access to care. Using a nationally representative survey of more than 270,000 Medicaid enrollees in 2014-15, we examined the consumer perspective on care in Medicaid. Average satisfaction ratings were 7.9 out of 10.0, but there were significant disparities across racial/ethnic groups. Satisfaction and access measures were generally similar among enrollees in managed care versus fee-for-service Medicaid. Access was significantly better in states where more physicians per capita accepted Medicaid patients: A one-standard-deviation increase in participating physicians per 100,000 population was associated with a 4.6-percentage-point increase in having a personal doctor. This was particularly true in fee-for-service Medicaid, and measures of physicians per capita were stronger predictors of patient experience than the simple percentage of doctors who accept Medicaid. Among those in Medicaid managed care, greater spending per enrollee was a significant predictor of satisfaction and access. Our findings emphasize that physician availability makes a difference in patients' experiences in Medicaid, and they indicate that racial/ethnic disparities in those experiences persist even among a uniformly insured population.

In 2014 California implemented a demonstration project called Cal MediConnect, which used managed care organizations to integrate Medicare and Medicaid, including long-term services and supports for beneficiaries dually eligible for Medicare and Medicaid. Postenrollment telephone surveys assessed how enrollees adjusted to Cal MediConnect over time. Results showed increased satisfaction with benefits, improved ratings of quality of care, fewer acute care visits, and increased personal care assistance hours over time. Enrollees also had somewhat better prescription medication access and lower unmet needs for personal care, compared to the comparison group. The lack of improvement in care coordination raises concerns about the implementation of the care coordination benefit, a key feature of the program. The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018 contains provisions that permanently certify the use of managed care (such as Dual Eligible Special Needs Plans) to integrate Medicare and Medicaid, which makes the lessons learned from California's duals demonstration especially relevant for informing other integrated programs for seniors and people with disabilities.

Between 1996 and 2015, mean annual increases in per visit emergency department (ED) expenditures were significantly greater for private insurance than Medicare, Medicaid, and no insurance, with no corresponding difference in ED charges. Expenditures as a proportion of charges decreased for all insurers over time. Private insurance had the highest expenditure-to-charge ratio in each year.

On average, state Medicaid programs paid 59 percent of what Medicare paid for primary care services in 2012. The Affordable Care Act required states in 2013 and 2014 to raise Medicaid payment rates to primary care physicians for certain services to the level of Medicare rates. The result was an average 73 percent increase in primary care Medicaid payments for qualifying physicians. This study used nationally representative data to examine the association between this Medicaid "fee bump" and physician-reported measures of participation in Medicaid. No such association was found. For example, about 65 percent of primary care physicians reported accepting new Medicaid patients in both 2012 and 2013, whereas about 67 percent reported doing so in 2014-a difference that is not significant. Multivariate results were similar. The lack of a sizable change in measures of physician participation in Medicaid may have been due to the temporary nature of the fee bump.

Alternative approaches in Medicaid are proliferating under the Trump administration. Using a novel telephone survey, we assessed views on health savings accounts, work requirements, and Medicaid expansion. Our sample consisted of 2,739 low-income nonelderly adults in three Midwestern states: Ohio, which expanded eligibility for traditional Medicaid; Indiana, which expanded Medicaid using health savings accounts called POWER accounts; and Kansas, which has not expanded Medicaid. We found that coverage rates in 2017 were significantly higher in the two expansion states than in Kansas. However, cost-related barriers were more common in Indiana than in Ohio. Among Medicaid beneficiaries eligible for Indiana's waiver program, 39 percent had not heard of POWER accounts, and only 36 percent were making required payments, which means that nearly two-thirds were potentially subject to loss of benefits or coverage. In Kansas, 77 percent of respondents supported expanding Medicaid. With regard to work requirements, 49 percent of potential Medicaid enrollees in Kansas were already employed, 34 percent were disabled, and only 11 percent were not working but would be more likely to look for a job if required by Medicaid. These findings suggest that current Medicaid innovations may lead to unintended consequences for coverage and access.

While most primary care physicians treated at least one Medicaid patient in 2013, Medicaid represented a small share of their payer mix. Following Medicaid eligibility expansion in 2014, most physicians maintained or slightly increased their Medicaid participation, with greater increases observed in states that expanded eligibility. Nevertheless, Medicaid patients remained concentrated among relatively few physicians after expansion.

From 2013 to 2017 the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services redacted Medicare claims that included diagnosis or procedure codes related to substance abuse. The redaction policy was in effect as the Affordable Care Act and the opioid epidemic changed the health care landscape. The policy substantially altered prevalence estimates of common chronic conditions that co-occur with substance abuse.

Expanding eligibility for Medicaid was a central goal of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which continues to be debated and discussed at the state and federal levels as further reforms are considered. In an effort to provide a synthesis of the available research, we systematically reviewed the peer-reviewed scientific literature on the effects of Medicaid expansion on the original goals of the ACA. After analyzing seventy-seven published studies, we found that expansion was associated with increases in coverage, service use, quality of care, and Medicaid spending. Furthermore, very few studies reported that Medicaid expansion was associated with negative consequences, such as increased wait times for appointments-and those studies tended to use study designs not suited for determining cause and effect. Thus, there is evidence to document improvements in several areas of health care delivery following the ACA Medicaid expansion. We outline areas for future research that can further reduce current knowledge gaps.

Frequent emergency department (ED) use often serves as a marker for poor access to non-ED ambulatory care. Policy makers and providers hoped that by expanding coverage, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) would curtail frequent ED use. We used data from California's Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development to compare the characteristics of frequent ED users among nonelderly adults in California before and after implementation of several major coverage expansion provisions in the ACA. Frequent users-patients with four or more annual ED visits-accounted for 7.9 percent of ED patients before and 8.5 percent after those provisions were implemented, and they were responsible for 30.7 percent of all visits before and 31.6 percent after. However, after controlling for patient-level characteristics, we found that the odds of being a frequent ED user were significantly lower post ACA for Medicaid-insured patients. Uninsured patients were also less likely to be frequent users post ACA, while privately insured patients experienced little change. The largest predictors of frequent ED use included having a diagnosis of a mental health condition or a substance use disorder. Interventions to address frequent ED use must involve Medicaid managed care plans, given that more than two-thirds of frequent ED users post ACA have Medicaid as their primary coverage source.

We assessed rates of employer health insurance offer, take-up, and coverage in June 2013 and March 2017 among workers. Overall, offer rates remained stable, and take-up and coverage rates increased. In Medicaid expansion states, the share of workers with family incomes at or below 138 percent of the federal poverty level who had employer-based coverage held steady, while uninsurance rates declined.

Recent research has shown that concern about the apprehension and deportation of undocumented immigrants can affect how members of their households who are eligible for public benefits choose to participate in public programs. The extent to which this "chilling effect" broadly affects adults' Medicaid enrollment nationally remains unclear, in part because of the difficulty of isolating undocumented immigrants in survey data. In this study we identified households that likely included undocumented immigrants and then examined whether gains in health care coverage due to the expansion of Medicaid eligibility under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) were dampened for eligible people living in households with mixed immigration status. We found no significant differences in coverage gains for people in mixed- relative to non-mixed-status households in expansion states. Coverage gains were significantly lower, however, for people in mixed-status households relative to those in non-mixed-status households in nonexpansion states. These findings suggest that household immigration status may have dampened the "woodwork effect," whereby the ACA enhanced knowledge about program availability, in turn increasing Medicaid enrollment in nonexpansion states among people previously eligible for the program but not enrolled in it.

Cost measures are a growing part of Medicare's value-based payment programs. Medicare Spending per Beneficiary (MSPB) is the cost measure included in Medicare's Hospital Value-Based Purchasing (VBP) Program. Beneficiaries who are dually enrolled in Medicare and Medicaid are known to have higher spending on care, but it is unknown whether spending on the MSPB measure varies based on dual enrollment and whether this has implications for the performance of safety-net hospitals. We found that after adjustment for comorbidities, dually enrolled beneficiaries had 4.3 percent higher spending, which was primarily driven by higher costs in the postacute setting associated with use of institutional postacute care. Hospitals in the highest quintile of the disproportionate share hospital index had poorer performance on the MSPB measure, and were more likely to be penalized under VBP. After adjustment for dual status, differences in MSPB performance between safety-net and non-safety-net hospitals were no longer significant. This suggests that differences in performance between the two types of hospitals were driven at least in part by differences in their patient populations. However, overall VBP payment impacts were largely unchanged after the MSPB measure was adjusted for dual-enrollment status.

Total nominal US health care spending increased 4.3 percent and reached $3.3 trillion in 2016. Per capita spending on health care increased by $354, reaching $10,348. The share of gross domestic product devoted to health care spending was 17.9 percent in 2016, up from 17.7 percent in 2015. Health spending growth decelerated in 2016 following faster growth in 2014 and 2015 associated with coverage expansions under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and strong retail prescription drug spending growth. In 2016 the slowdown was broadly based, as spending for the largest categories by payer and by service decelerated. Enrollment trends drove the slowdown in Medicaid and private health insurance spending growth in 2016, while slower per enrollee spending growth influenced Medicare spending. Furthermore, spending for retail prescription drugs slowed, partly as a result of lower spending for drugs used to treat hepatitis C, while slower use and intensity of services drove the slowdown in hospital care and physician and clinical services.

We used data for 2014-15 from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey to estimate standardized payments for nonelderly adults' physician office visits by type of insurance. Adults with public insurance, especially Medicaid, had substantially lower provider payments, out-of-pocket spending, and third-party payments than their peers with employer-sponsored or Marketplace insurance. Quantifying public-private payment differences can help clarify choices for financing health care among low-income Americans.

Oregon's 2008 Medicaid expansion significantly increased the use of prescription medications in 2009-10.