Early Marketplace Enrollees Were Older And Used More Medication Than Later Enrollees; Marketplaces Pooled Risk [Web First] Little is known about the health status of the 7.3 million Americans who enrolled in insurance plans through the Marketplaces established by the Affordable Care Act in 2014. Medication use may provide an early indicator of the health needs and access to care among Marketplace enrollees. We used data from January–September 2014 on more than one million Marketplace enrollees from Express Scripts, the largest pharmacy benefit management company in the United States. We compared the characteristics and medication use between early and late Marketplace enrollees and between all Marketplace enrollees and enrollees with employer-sponsored insurance. Among Marketplace enrollees, we found...
Most Uninsured Adults Could Schedule Primary Care Appointments Before The ACA, But Average Price Was $160 [Access To Care] Provisions of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) allow millions more Americans to obtain health insurance. However, a sizable number of people remain uninsured because they live in states that have not expanded Medicaid coverage or because they feel that Marketplace coverage is not affordable. Using data from a ten-state telephone survey in which callers posed as patients, we examined prices for primary care visits offered by physician offices to new uninsured patients in 2012–13, prior to ACA insurance expansions. Patients were quoted a mean price of $160. Significantly lower prices for the uninsured were offered by family practice offices compared...
