Assessing the Public Health Impact of State Health Benefit Mandates

Objective. To document the process used in assessing the public health impact of proposed health insurance benefit mandates in California as part of the California Health Benefits Review Program (CHBRP) to serve as a guide for other states interested in incorporating a public health impact analysis into their state mandated benefit review process.
Background. As of September 2004, of the 26 states that require reviews of mandated benefit legislation, 25 required an assessment of the cost impact, 12 required an assessment of the medical efficacy, and only 6 had language requiring an assessment of the public health impact.
Methodology. This paper presents the methodology used to calculate the overall public health impact of each mandate. This includes a discussion of data sources, required data elements, and the methods used to quantify the impact of a mandated health insurance benefit on: overall public health, on gender and racial disparities in health outcomes, on premature death, and on the economic loss associated with disease. In addition we identify the limitations of this type of analysis.
Conclusions. The approach that California has adopted to review proposed health benefit mandates represents a leap forward in its consideration of the impact of such mandates on the health of the population. the approach is unique in its specific requirements to address public health impacts as well as the attempt to quantify these impacts by the CHBRP team. The requirement to make available this information to the state government has the potential, ultimately, to increase the availability of health insurance products in California that will maximize public health.     

Carve-out plan financial requirements associated with national behavioral health parity

ObjectivesTo examine changes in carve‐out financial requirements (copayments, coinsurance, use of deductibles, and out‐of‐pocket maxima) following the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act (MHPAEA).Data Source/Study SettingSpecialty mental health benefit design information for employer‐sponsored carve‐out plans from a national managed behavioral health organization''s claims processing engine (2008‐2013).Study DesignThis pre‐post study reports linear and logistic regression as the main analysis.Data Collection/Extraction MethodsNA.Principal FindingsCopayments for in‐network emergency room (−$44.9, 95% CI: −78.3, −11.5; preparity mean: $56.2), outpatient services (eg, individual psychotherapy: −$7.4, 95% CI: −10.5, −4.2; preparity mean: $17.8), and out‐of‐network coinsurance for emergency room (−11 percentage points, 95% CI: −16.7, −5.4; preparity mean: 38.8 percent) and outpatient (eg, individual psychotherapy: −5.8 percentage points, 95% CI: −10.0, −1.6; preparity mean 41.0 percent) decreased. Probability of family OOP maxima use (29 percentage points, 95% CI: 19.3, 38.6; preparity mean: 36 percent) increased. In‐network outpatient coinsurance increased (eg, individual psychotherapy: 4.5 percentage points, 95% CI: 1.1, 7.9; preparity mean: 2.7 percent), as did probability of use of family deductibles (15 percentage points, 95% CI: 6.1, 23.3; preparity mean: 38 percent).ConclusionsMHPAEA was associated with increased generosity in most financial requirements observed here. However, increased use of deductibles may have reduced generosity for some patients.     

Translating Medical Effectiveness Research into Policy: Lessons from the California Health Benefits Review Program

Context: Legislatures and executive branch agencies in the United States and other nations are increasingly using reviews of the medical literature to inform health policy decisions. To clarify these efforts to give policymakers evidence of medical effectiveness, this article discusses the California Health Benefits Review Program (CHBRP). This program, based at the University of California, analyzes the medical effectiveness of health insurance benefit mandate bills for the California legislature, as well as their impact on cost and public health. Methods: This article is based on the authors’ experience reviewing benefit mandate bills for CHBRP and findings from evaluations of the program. General observations are illustrated with examples from CHBRP's reports. Information about efforts to incorporate evidence into health policymaking in other states and nations was obtained through a review of published literature. Findings: CHBRP produces reports that California legislators, legislative staff, and other major stakeholders value and use routinely in deliberations about benefit mandate bills. Where available, the program relies on previously published meta‐analyses and systematic reviews to streamline the review of the medical literature. Faculty and staff responsible for the medical effectiveness sections of CHBRP's reports have learned four major lessons over the course of the program's six‐year history: the need to (1) recognize the limitations of the medical literature, (2) anticipate the need to inform legislators about the complexity of evidence, (3) have realistic expectations regarding the impact of medical effectiveness reviews, and (4) understand the consequences of the reactive nature of mandated benefit reviews. Conclusions: CHBRP has demonstrated that it is possible to produce useful reviews of the medical literature within the tight time constraints of the legislative process. The program's reports have provided state legislators with independent analyses that allow them to move beyond sifting through conflicting information from proponents and opponents to consider difficult policy choices and their implications.     

Mental Health Benefits in Employer-sponsored Health Plans, 1997–2003

Data drawn from the Mercer National Survey of Employer-sponsored Health Plans in 1997 and 2003 indicate that a large majority of employers continue to provide some level of coverage for mental health (MH) services in their primary plans. However, a majority of plans continue to impose different benefit limitations for MH than for other medical treatment. Among plans with limitations on MH coverage, there was a sharp increase in the use of limits on inpatient days and outpatient visits between 1997 and 2003. The proportion of employers providing coverage for some MH services decreased; e.g., among small employers, 88% provided coverage for inpatient MH care in 2003, compared with 94% in 1997. These results suggest that parity legislation has had a noticeable but limited effect, but that, at least in the short-term, it is unlikely that universal parity in employer-based plans will be achieved through a legislative strategy.     

Identifying barriers to move to better health coverage: preferences for health insurance benefits among the rural poor population in La Guajira,Colombia

Even though access to health insurance in Colombia has improved since the implementation of the 1993 health reforms (Law 100), universal coverage has not yet been accomplished. There is still a segment of the population under the low‐income (subsidized) health insurance policy or without health insurance altogether. The purpose of this research was to identify preferences and behavior regarding health insurance among the subsidized rural population in La Guajira, Colombia, and to understand why that population remains under the subsidized health insurance policy. The field experiment gathered information from 400 households regarding their socioeconomic situation, health conditions, and preferences for health insurance characteristics. Results suggest that the surveyed population gives priority to expanded family coverage, physician and hospital choice, and access to specialists, rather than to attributes associated with co‐payments or premiums. That indicates that people value healthcare benefits and family coverage more than health insurance expenses, and policy makers could use these preferences to enroll subsidized population into the contributory regime. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Health Services Research as a Source of Legislative Analysis and Input: The Role of the California Health Benefits Review Program

This article examines the role of the California Health Benefits Review Program (CHBRP) as a source of information in state health policy making. It explains why the California benefits review process relies heavily on university-based researchers and employs a broad set of criteria for review, which set it apart from similar programs in other states. It then analyzes the politics of health insurance mandates and how independent research and analysis might alter the perceived benefits and costs of health insurance mandates and thus political outcomes. It considers how research and analysis is typically used by policy makers, and illustrates how participants inside and outside of state government have used the reports prepared by CHBRP as both guidance in policy design and as political ammunition. Although there is consensus that the review process has reduced the number of mandate bills that are passed out of the legislature, both supporters and opponents favor the new process and generally believe the reports strengthen their case in legislative debates over health insurance mandates. The role of the CHBRP is narrowly defined by statute at the present time, but the program may well face pressure to evolve from its current academic orientation into a more interactive, advisory role for legislators in the future.     

成都市补充医疗保险办法及职工参保情况分析

对成都市现行4种补充医疗保险办法进行比较分析,并分别比较不同社会经济状况职工的补充医疗保险参保率,为完善和发展补充医疗保险提供参考依据。     

The Mandatory Health Insurance System in Chile: Explaining the Choice between Public and Private Insurance

In Chile, dependent workers and retirees are mandated by law to purchase health insurance, and can choose between private and public health insurance. This paper studies the determinants of the choice of health insurance. Earnings are generally considered the key factor in this choice, and we confirm this, but find that other factors are also important. It is particularly interesting to analyze how the individual's characteristics interact with the design of the system to influence choice. Worse health, as signaled by age or sex (e.g., older people or women in reproductive ages), results in adverse selection against the public health insurance system. This is due to the lack of risk adjustment of the public health insurance's premium. Hence, Chile's risk selection problem is, at least in part, due to the design of the Chilean public insurance system.     

The distribution of net benefits under the National Health Insurance programme in Taiwan

The redistributive effects of a social insurance programme are determined by how the programme is paid for-who pays and how much do they pay?-and how the benefits are distributed. As a result, the redistributive effects of a social health insurance programme should be evaluated on the basis of its net benefit-the difference between benefits and payment. Among the rich body of empirical analysis on equity in health care financing, however, most studies have relied on partial analysis, assessing equity by source of financing while ignoring the benefit side, or looking at equity in benefits but ignoring the funding side. Either approach risks misleading findings. In this study, therefore, the primary objective was to assess the distribution of net benefits across income groups under Taiwan's National Health Insurance (NHI) programme. This study observed a nationally representative sample of 74 012 NHI enrolees from 1996 to 2000. The unique NHI databases in Taiwan provide comprehensive enrolment and utilization information, and allowed linkage to each enrolee's income tax files. In addition to crude estimates, two-part models and ordinary least-square models were used to adjust inpatient and outpatient benefits for health care needs (age, sex, major disease status and physical disability). After adjusting for health care needs, the distribution of net benefits showed an apparent pro-poor pattern, with the lowest income group receiving the highest net benefits (NT$3353) and the top income group receiving the lowest net benefits (-NT$3072) in 1996. Although a clear pro-poor pattern was observed among those enrolees who paid wage-based premiums, this vertically equitable pattern was less evident among the enrolees who paid fixed premiums. Overall, a trend of increasing net benefits was observed in all income groups between 1996 and 2000, and all the NHI enrolees can be considered better off over time. In addition to contributing to the limited literature on equity in net benefits, the study provides an important policy reference to developing countries with large underground economies and relatively small populations of regular wage-earners as it indicates that using fixed premiums as a major financing scheme may pose a serious equity concern and policy challenge.     

Discursive Constructions of Breastfeeding in U.S. State Laws

Previous research has identified several ways that breastfeeding is constructed in public discourses, each with consequences for breastfeeding attitudes, policies, and practices. Researchers analyzed discursive constructions of breastfeeding in U.S. state laws regarding breastfeeding in public to see if common representations were replicated in law and to identify patterns among states that used similar language. Results indicated that laws varied in the level of protection they offered, with the least protective laws decriminalizing breastfeeding in public and the most protective laws criminalizing interference with breastfeeding. The least protective states were located in the Western and North-Central regions, Republican-leaning, and less urban, whereas the most protective states were located in the New England and North-Central regions, Democrat-leaning, and more urban. Most states that fell on either end of this continuum had breastfeeding rates above the national average. Laws also varied in the level of regulation implied in their language, with the most regulative laws specifying that “a mother” can breastfeed “her baby” only in certain places and under certain conditions (discreetly). The most regulative states were located in the Southern and North-Central regions and had low breastfeeding rates, whereas the least regulative states were Western and had high breastfeeding rates.     

Employer Offers, Private Coverage, and the Tax Subsidy for Health Insurance: 1987 and 1996

Economists have long been interested in the effect of tax-based subsidies on private health insurance coverage. We examine this relationship using pooled data from the 1987 National Medical Expenditure Survey and the 1996 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey. Our main tax price elasticity estimates for employer offers and for private coverage are near the mid-point of the existing literature. However, these estimates may mask substantial differences in tax-price responsiveness across subsets of workers. Our more disaggregated analysis reveals tax price responsiveness to be significantly above average for low-income workers, workers with low health risks, and workers in small firms—precisely those groups whose continued participation in employment-related risk pooling is of greatest policy concern. In addition, we present family-level elasticities that allow for joint decision-making in two-worker families.     

The Georgian healthcare system: is it reaching the WHO health system goals?

After the break-up of the Soviet Union, the country of Georgia suffered from intense civil unrest and socio-economic deterioration, which particularly affected the health sector. To remedy the situation, the government initiated health sector reform, which introduced major changes in healthcare financing in Georgia: the previously free healthcare model was replaced by social insurance, and patients were required to pay out-of-pocket for services not covered by insurance. This paper is an attempt to determine if the health system of Georgia is reaching the WHO health system goals of improved health status, responsiveness to patients' needs (consumer satisfaction), and financial risk protection as a result of health reforms.     

我国公共卫生地方立法研究--基于32部地方法律规范的实证分析

推动公共卫生事业持续健康发展需要健全完善的地方立法体系。截止2019年1月,我国各地区出台的,直接以公共卫生为"标的",现仍具有法律效力的地方法律规范共计32部,呈现出:立法主体上,多元性和多层级;立法时间上,跨度大和某一时间段较为集中;立法目的和内容上,较为单一和集中等特征。上述立法虽在一定程度上保障了地方公共卫生事业的有序开展,但毋庸讳言,目前也存在着难以满足新时代地方公共卫生事业发展需要,部分立法条款严谨性不够、操作性不强等问题。当前,应按照新时代公共卫生事业的发展要求明确立法导向和内容,加快公共卫生地方立法清理的步伐和进程等路径措施,提升我国公共卫生地方立法质效。     

The effect of distance to provider on employee response to changes in mental health benefits

We assess whether distance to provider moderates the effect of a change in mental health benefits on treatment initiation of employees of a large US-based company for psychiatric disorders. Mental health treatment administrative claims data plus eligibility information provided by a Fortune 50 company for the years 1995-1998 are used for the analysis. The effect of distance is measured using the relative effect of the initiative on residents living far from providers compared to those living close to providers. We model the probability of treatment initiation using a random effects logit specification. We find that the effect of distance to provider has the potential to over-shadow other incentives to initiate treatment, especially at distances greater than 4 miles. These results lend further support to the notion that geographic dispersion of providers should be an important consideration when forming a selective contracting network.