Research on Affordable Care Act Reported by a Researcher at Boston University (High Deductible Health Plans and Use of Free Preventive Services Under the Affordable Care Act): Affordable Care Act

Health Policy and Law Daily

2023 JUN 30 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Health Policy and Law Daily -- Fresh data on affordable care act are presented in a new report. According to news originating from Boston, Massachusetts, by NewsRx editors, the research stated, “The Affordable Care Act aimed to increase use of preventive services by eliminating cost-sharing to consumers.”

Financial supporters for this research include Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; Horowitz Foundation For Social Policy.

Our news correspondents obtained a quote from the research from Boston University: “However, patients may be unaware of this benefit or they may not seek preventive services if they anticipate that the cost of potential diagnostic or treatment services will be too high, both more likely among those in high deductible health plans. We used nationally representative private health insurance claims (100% sample of IBM^® MarketScan^®) for the United States from 2006 to 2018, restricting the data to enrollment and claims for non-elderly adults who were enrolled for the full plan year. The cross-sectional sample (185 million person-years) is used to describe trends in preventive service use and costs from 2008 through 2016. The cohort sample (9 million people) focuses on the elimination of cost-sharing for certain high-value preventive services in late 2010, requiring continuous enrollment across 2010 and 2011. We examine whether HDHP enrollment is associated with use of eligible preventive services using semi-parametric difference-in-differences to account for endogenous plan selection. Our preferred model implies that HDHP enrollment was associated with a reduction of the post-ACA change in any use of eligible preventive services by 0.2 percentage points or 12.5%.”

According to the news reporters, the research concluded: “Cancer screenings were unaffected but HDHP enrollment was associated with smaller increases in wellness visits, immunizations, and screening for chronic conditions and sexually transmitted infections. We also find that the policy was ineffective at reducing out-of-pocket costs for the eligible preventive services, likely due to implementation issues.”

For more information on this research see: High Deductible Health Plans and Use of Free Preventive Services Under the Affordable Care Act. INQUIRY: The Journal of Health Care Organization, Provision, and Financing, 2023,60. (INQUIRY: The Journal of Health Care Organization, Provision, and Financing - https://journals.sagepub.com/home/inq). The publisher for INQUIRY: The Journal of Health Care Organization, Provision, and Financing is SAGE Publications.

A free version of this journal article is available at https://doi.org/10.1177/00469580231182512.

Our news editors report that more information may be obtained by contacting Paul R. Shafer, Department of Health Law, Policy and Management, School of Public Health, Boston University, Boston, MA, United States. Additional authors for this research include Stacie B. Dusetzina, Lindsay M. Sabik, Timothy F. Platts-Mills, Sally C. Stearns, Justin G. Trogdon.

ORCID is an identifier for authors and includes bibliographic information. The following is ORCID information for the author of this research: Paul R. Shafer (http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0654-5821).

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