Individual insurance benefits to be available under health reform would have cut out-of-pocket spending in 2001-08

Under the Affordable Care Act, individual health insurance will probably become more generous and more like employment-related insurance. Currently, individual insurance typically has less generous benefits than employment-related insurance. This study compared out-of-pocket spending on health care between individual and employment-related insurance, controlling for numerous characteristics such as health status. Then it simulated the impact of full implementation of provisions of the Affordable Care Act on adults who currently have individual insurance, including important subgroups-adults with chronic conditions, the near-elderly (ages 55-64), and low-income populations. If adults who had individual insurance during 2001-08 had instead had benefits similar to those under the Affordable Care Act, their average annual out-of-pocket spending on medical care and drugs might have been $280 less. The near-elderly and people with low incomes might have saved $589 and $535, respectively. An important improvement would have been the reduced probability of incurring very high out-of-pocket spending. The likelihood of having out-of-pocket expenditures on care exceeding $6,000 would have been reduced for all adults with individual insurance, and the likelihood of having expenditures exceeding $4,000 would have been reduced for many.     

Variability and growth in spending for outpatient specialty pharmaceuticals

Specialty pharmaceuticals are a unique group of drug agents used to treat complex clinical conditions. Many specialty pharmaceuticals are biological in nature and administered through injection or infusion. Tracking spending on these pharmaceuticals is complex, because these products may be processed as either medical or pharmacy claims. This benchmarking study of ten Blue Cross Blue Shield plans, representing almost eighteen million covered lives, documents large expenditures on select specialty pharmaceutical categories and much variation in spending across plans, age groups, and time. Our results underscore the need for insurers to scrutinize trends in specialty pharmaceutical spending and identify appropriate management strategies.     

Trends in out-of-pocket spending by insured American workers, 1990-1997

This paper examines trends in out-of-pocket spending for insured workers from 1990 to 1997. Data are from the Consumer Expenditure Survey conducted by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The survey collects detailed quarterly data on all consumer spending from logs kept each year by more than 10,000 households with job-based health insurance. During the study period, total out-of-pocket spending in constant dollars remained unchanged. Spending for medical expenses, drugs, and supplies declined by 23 percent, but this decline was offset by rising employee contributions for health insurance premiums. The shift to managed care, whose benefit structure requires less cost sharing, may have played a role in reducing out-of-pocket spending.     

Investigating determinants of out-of-pocket spending and strategies for coping with payments for healthcare in southeast Nigeria

Background  

Out-of-pocket spending (OOPS) is the major payment strategy for healthcare in Nigeria. Hence, the paper assessed the determinants socio-economic status (SES) of OOPS and strategies for coping with payments for healthcare in urban, semi-urban and rural areas of southeast Nigeria. This paper provides information that would be required to improve financial accessibility and equity in financing within the public health care system.     

Examining the density in out-of-pocket spending share in the estimation of catastrophic health expenditures

The European Journal of Health Economics - Universal health coverage (UHC) aims to provide access to health services for all without financial hardship. Moving toward UHC while ensuring financial...     

Riding the rollercoaster: the ups and downs in out-of-pocket spending under the standard Medicare drug benefit

This study projects how much Medicare beneficiaries who sign up for the standard Part D drug benefit in 2006 will pay in quarterly out-of-pocket payments through 2008. In the first year we estimate that about 38 percent of enrollees will hit the benefit's no-coverage zone, known as the "doughnut hole," and that 14 percent will exceed the catastrophic threshold. Because drug spending is highly persistent over time, beneficiaries who experience the biggest gaps in coverage are likely to do so year after year, with potentially serious financial consequences.     

Federal mandatory spending caps vital for health care reform

Rising health spending creates an increasing burden on families, businesses, and government. Federal health spending--chiefly on Medicare and Medicaid--is a major contributor to a budget deficit that threatens to exceed $400 billion. In order to control that deficit, the President and the Congress must cap mandatory spending, excluding Social Security. In turn, policymakers should adopt health reforms to fit spending within the cap including enrolling more consumers in managed care plans, resolving medical liability disputes in arbitration instead of courts, and increasing assessment of research into cost-effective new technology.     

Household health expenditures in Nepal: implications for health care financing reform.

His Majesty's Government of Nepal has embarked on an ambitious social welfare programme of increasing the accessibility of primary education and health care services in rural communities. The implications on the financing of health care services are substantial, as the number of health posts has increased twelve-fold from 1992 to 1996, from 200 to 2597. To strengthen health care financing, government policy-makers are considering a number of financing strategies that are likely to have a substantial impact on household health care expenditures. However, more needs to be known about the role of households in the current structure of the health economy before the government designs and implements policies that affect household welfare. This paper uses the Nepal Living Standards Survey, a rich, nationally-representative sample of households from 1996, to investigate level and distribution of household out-of-pocket health expenditures. Utilization and expenditures for different types of providers are presented by urban/rural status and by socioeconomic status. In addition, the sources of health sector funds are analyzed by contrasting household out-of-pocket expenditures with expenditures by the government and donors. The results indicate that households spend about 5.5% of total household expenditures on health care and that households account for 74% of the total level of funds used to finance the health economy. In addition, rural households are found to spend more on health care than urban households, after controlling for income status. Distributing health care expenditures by type of care utilized indicates that the wealthy, as well as the poor, rely heavily on services provided by the public sector. The results of this analysis are used to discuss the feasibility of implementing alternative health care financing policies.     

The inequity in out-of-pocket expenditures for healthcare in Tajikistan: evidence and implications from a nationally representative survey

Objective  

Out-of-pocket expenditures (OPE) for healthcare are a widespread and enduring phenomenon in post-communist countries. However, evidence regarding their effect on health equity is limited, especially in the low-income countries of Central Asia. With this in mind, the current paper presents the results of an analysis of the impact of OPE on equity in Tajikistan, one of the poorest transitional countries.     

Bayesian approaches to the value of information: implications for the regulation of new pharmaceuticals.

The current regulation of new pharmaceuticals is inefficient because it demands arbitrary amounts of information, the type of information demanded is not relevant to decision-makers and the same standards of evidence are applied across different technologies. Bayesian decision theory and an analysis of the value of both perfect and sample information is used to consider the efficient regulation of new pharmaceuticals. This type of analysis can be used to decide whether the evidence in an economic study provides 'sufficient substantiation' for an economic claim, and assesses whether evidence can be regarded as 'competent and reliable'.     

Urban employee health insurance reform and the impact on out-of-pocket payment in China

Since the middle of the 1990s, China has undertaken a significant reform in urban employee health insurance programs. Using data from the pilot experiment conducted in Zhenjiang, this study examines changes in the pre- and post-reform distributions of out-of-pocket (OOP) expenditures across four representative groups by chronic disease, income, education, and job status. Major findings suggested increased OOP expenditures for all groups after the reform. However, the redistributions in OOP appear to be in favor of the disadvantaged groups, suggesting a more equitable change led by the reform. This study concludes that the post-reform insurance model did not compromise equity in cost-sharing while containing cost inflation and increasing insurance coverage for the urban population.