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This article assesses the extent to which managed competition could be successful in rural areas. Using 1990 Medicare hospital patient origin data, over 8 million rural residents were found to live in areas potentially without provider choice. Almost all of these areas were served by providers who compete for other segments of their market. Restricting use of out-of-State providers would severely limit opportunities for choice. These findings suggest that most residents of rural States would receive cost benefits from a managed competition system if purchasing alliances are carefully defined, but consideration should be given to boundary issues when forming alliances.

Since the early 1990s, Colombia has made great strides in extending healthcare coverage to its population. In order to measure the impact of these efforts, it is important to assess whether the introduction of universal health coverage has translated into equitable access to healthcare in the country, particularly for the elderly. Thus, in this study we assessed the inequality in utilization of health services among elderly patients in Colombia. In addition, we identified the determinants of healthcare utilization. We analyzed the 2015 Colombian health, well-being and aging study (SABE). To classify determinants of healthcare use into predisposing, enabling and need factors, we employed the Anderson framework of healthcare utilization. Use of outpatient, inpatient and preventive health services constituted the dependent variables. We performed multivariate logistic regressions, estimated concentration indexes (CI) and performed decomposition analyses of the CIs to determine the contribution of various determinants to inequality of healthcare utilization. The study sample included 23,694 adults over 60-years-old. Wealth quintile, urban dwelling, health insurance type and multimorbidity predicted the utilization of all types of healthcare services except for hospitalization. Aside from inpatient care, pro-rich inequality in utilization of healthcare services was present. Wealth quintile and type of health insurance were the largest contributors to pro-rich inequality in use of preventive services. While there has been progress in health insurance coverage for the elderly in Colombia, there are still equality challenges in the delivery of healthcare, especially for preventive and outpatient care. These inequalities are driven by individual characteristics such as wealth, urban residence, type of health insurance carried, and presence of multimorbidity. To address this issue, the Colombian health system should extend health insurance coverage to uninsured populations, as well as reduce barriers of access to healthcare services among poorest and the rural population receiving subsidized insurance.

The intent of adopting managed care plans is to improve access to health care services while containing costs. To date, there have been a number of studies that examine the relationship between managed care and access to health care. However, the results from previous studies have been inconsistent. Specifically, previous studies did not demonstrate a clear benefit of Medicaid managed care. In this study we have examine whether Medicaid managed care is associated with the probabilities of preventable hospitalizations. This study also analyzes the spillover effect of Medicaid managed care into Medicaid patients in traditional FFS plans and the interaction effects of other patient- and county-level variables on preventable hospitalizations. The study included 254,321 Medicaid patients who were admitted to short-term general hospital in the 67 counties in Florida. Using 2008 hospital inpatient discharge data for working-age adult Medicaid enrollees (18-64 years) in Florida, we conduct multivariate logistic regression analyses to identify possible factors associated with preventable hospitalizations. The first model includes patient- and county-level variables. Then, we add interaction terms between Medicaid HMO and other variables such as race, rurality, market-level factors, and resource for primary care. The results show that Medicaid HMO patients are more likely to be hospitalized for ambulatory care sensitive conditions (ACSCs) (OR = 1.30; CI = 1.21, 1.40). We also find that market structure (i.e., competition) is significantly associated with preventable hospitalizations. However, our study does not support that there are spillover effects of Medicaid managed care on preventable hospitalizations for other Medicaid recipients. We find that interactions between Medicaid managed care and race, rurality and market structure are significant. The results of our study show that the Medicaid managed care program in Florida was associated with an increase in potentially preventable hospitalizations for Medicaid enrollees. The results suggest that lower capitation rate has been associated with a greater likelihood of preventable hospitalizations for Medicaid managed care patients. Our findings also indicate that increased competition in the Medicaid managed care market has no clear benefit in Medicaid managed care patients.

Aims This study aimed to determine the characteristics of patients with heart failure and high costs (top 1% and top 2–5% highest costs in perspective of the general population) and to explore the longitudinal health care utilization and persistency of high costs. Methods and results Longitudinal observational study using claims data from 2006 to 2014 in the Netherlands. We identified all patients that received a hospital treatment for chronic heart failure between 1 January 2008 and 31 December 2010. Of each selected patient, all claims from the Dutch curative health system and with a starting date between 1 January 2006 and 31 December 2014 were extracted. Pharmaceutical and hospital claims were used to establish characteristics and indicators for health care utilization. Descriptive analyses and generalized estimating equation models were used to analyse characteristics, longitudinal health care utilization and to identify factors associated with high costs. Our findings revealed that the difference in costs between top 1%, top 2–5%, and bottom 95% patients with heart failure was mainly driven by hospital costs; and the top 1% group experienced a remarkable increase of mental health costs. Top 1% and top 2–5% patients with heart failure differed from lower cost patients in their higher rate of chronic conditions, excessive polypharmacy, hospital admissions, and heart‐related surgeries. Heart‐related surgeries contributed to the incidental high costs in 54% of top 1% patients, and the costs of the remaining top 1% patients were driven by mental health and pharmaceuticals use and rates of chronic conditions and multimorbidity. Top 1% patients were relatively young. Anaemia, dementia, diseases of arteries, veins and lymphatic vessels, influenza, and kidney failure were significantly associated with high costs. The end‐of‐life period was predictive of top 1% and top 5% costs. More than 90% of the population incurred at least one top 5% year during follow‐up, and 31.8% incurred at least one top 1% year. Fifty‐seven per cent incurred multiple top 5% years whereas only 8.6% incurred multiple top 1% years. Top 5% years were more frequently consecutive than top 1% years. Conclusions Top 1% utilization occurs predominantly incidentally and among less than a third of patients with heart failure, whereas almost all patients with heart failure experience at least one top 5% year, and more than half experience two or more top 5% years. Both medical and psychiatric/psychosocial needs contribute to high costs in heart failure patients. Comprehensive and integrated efforts are needed to further improve quality of care and reduce unnecessary costs.

Since the 1990s some European countries have had regulated health insurance exchanges or have incorporated elements of exchange markets into their health systems. Health reforms in Switzerland and the Netherlands in 1996 and 2006, respectively, created managed competition in the countries' health insurance markets, which are somewhat analogous to the US state and federally operated health insurance exchanges scheduled to begin operations in 2013 under the Affordable Care Act. We review the Swiss and Dutch experience with exchanges and offer specific lessons for the US exchanges. First, risk-adjustment mechanisms-which provide premium adjustments intended to compensate health plans for enrolling people expected to have high medical costs-need to be sophisticated and continually updated. Second, it is important to determine why people eligible for coverage don't enroll and to craft responses that will overcome enrollment barriers. Third, applying for subsidies must be simple. Fourth, insurers will need bargaining power similar to that of providers to create a level playing field for negotiating about prices and quality of services, and interim cost containment measures may be necessary. Fifth and finally, insurers and consumers alike will need meaningful information about providers' costs and quality of care so they can become prudent purchasers of health services, since managed competition among health plans by itself will not substantially drive down health costs. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]

As the Affordable Care Act (ACA, otherwise known as Obamacare) continues along a very bumpy road, it is worth asking where it came from and what comes next. Officially, Obamacare represents the latest in more than a century of efforts in the United States to achieve universal access to health care. In reality, Obamacare has strengthened the for-profit insurance industry by transferring public, tax-generated revenues to the private sector. It has done and will do little to improve the problem of uninsurance in the United States; in fact, it has already begun to worsen the problem of underinsurance. Obamacare is also financially unsustainable because it has no effective way to control costs. Meanwhile, despite benefits for some of the richest corporations and executives, and adverse or mixed effects for the non-rich, a remarkable manipulation of political symbolism has conveyed the notion that Obamacare is a creation of the left, warranting strenuous opposition from the right.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

Many studies arguing for or against markets to finance medical care investigate \"market-oriented\" measures such as cost sharing. This article looks at the experience in the American medical marketplace over more than a decade, showing how markets function as institutions in which participants who are self-seeking, but not perfectly rational, exercise power over other participants in the market. Cost experience here was driven more by market power over prices than by management of utilization. Instead of following any logic of efficiency or equity, system transformations were driven by beliefs about investment strategies. At least in the United States' labor and capital markets, competition has shown little ability to rationalize health care systems because its goals do not resemble those of the health care system most people want.

In international comparisons, the Swedish health care system has been seen to perform well. In recent years, market-oriented, demand-driven health care reforms aimed at free choice of provider by patients and free establishment of doctors are increasingly promoted in Sweden. The stated objective is to improve access and efficiency in health services and to provide more and/or better services for the money. Swedish health policy aims to provide equal access to care, based on equal need. However, the social and economic gradient in disease and ill health does not translate into the same social and economic gradient in demand for health services. A marketoriented, demand-driven health care system runs the risk of defeating the health policy aims and of further increasing gaps between social groups in access and utilization of health care services, to the detriment of those with greater needs, unless it is coupled with need-based allocation of resources and empowerment of these groups.

Background Copayments, deductibles, and coinsurance, are elements of health-care systems to make prices salient for the insured. Individuals may respond differently to cost sharing, according to the type of care they seek; dental care, as a combination of both acute and elective care, is an ideal setting to study the effects of cost-sharing mechanisms on utilization. Objective To test how coinsurance affects dental-care utilization in a middle-income country context. Methods This study uses policy variations in the Colombian health-care system to analyze changes in dental-care utilization due to different levels of coinsurance. We used matching procedures to balance observed differences in pre-treatment variables between those who face coinsurance (non-policy holders, or beneficiaries) and those who don’t (policyholders). We use zero-inflated negative binomial models for the count of visits and two-part models for total expenditures, and test for unobservable confounders with random-effect models and instrumental variables. Results Individuals who face coinsurance are less likely to have any dental-care utilization, at a relatively small scale. Facing coinsurance does not correlate with changes in total expenditures. Falsification tests with dental-care visits exempt from coinsurance show no statistically distinguishable changes in utilization. Random-effect models and instrumental variable models show results similar to the main specification. Conclusions Cost-sharing policies in Colombia seem to be well designed because they don’t represent an important barrier to dental-care access.

Objective The Israeli risk adjustment formula, introduced in 1995 and which serves for the allocation of the health budget to the sickness funds, is unique compared to countries with a similar national health insurance system in that it is not calculated on the basis of actual cost data of the sickness funds but on the basis of quantities retrieved from surveys. The current article aims to analyze the implications of the Israeli methodology. Methods The article examines the validity of the Israeli methodology used to set the 2004 risk adjustment rates and compare these rates with the \"correct\" ones, which are derived from the 2004 internal relative cost scales of the sickness funds. Results The Israeli methodology ignores services provided by the sickness funds and assumes constant unit cost across the sickness funds, an assumption which is implausible. Comparing the actual and the \"correct\" rates, it turns out that the actual rates over-compensate all the sickness funds for members in age 0-14, and under-compensate them for insurees aged 55+. In age 0—4, the over-compensation per capita is about NIS 1,500 while the under-compensation in age group 75+ reaches NIS 1,600. Conclusions The current risk adjustment formula distorts the intended competition on good quality care among the sickness funds, and turns it into a competition on profitable members. After 18 years of using incorrect rates, the Israeli risk adjustment rates should be calculated, as is common in other systems, based on individual cost data from the sickness funds.