Monitoring Regional Access With Administrative Data

This brief presents two methods that state Medicaid agencies can use to assess regional differences in access.

Leveraging Benchmarks, Advisory Groups, and Experts to Understand Access in Medicaid

This brief presents a process that staff in state Medicaid agencies can use to engage resources—such as benchmarks, subject matter experts, and advisory groups—in the development of their access monitoring review plans.

Strategies to Compare Access to Care Among Medicaid Beneficiaries Versus other Populations

This brief presents statistical methods that staff in state Medicaid agencies could use to assess how well their Medicaid program is meeting the goal of access to care for Medicaid beneficiaries that is comparable to that for populations with other sources of coverage.

Medicaid Access Monitoring Review Plans: Payment Rate Resource Toolkit

The Payment Resource Toolkit is a resource to help states identify and access data on Medicaid, Medicare, and commercial payment rates.

Patterns of Opioid Prescribing in Minnesota: 2012 and 2015

Opioids are a class of drugs that include prescription opioid medications for pain relief —such as oxycodone (OxyContin®), hydrocodone (Vicodin®), codeine, morphine, and fentanyl—as well as illicitly produced drugs like heroin and fentanyl-related substances (also called fentanyl analogs).

Self-Insurance and Stop Loss for Small Employers

Summarizes ACA incentives for small insurers to self-insure and what is known about the stop-loss market.

National Health Care Reform and Solvency Risk

Health insurance companies hold uncommitted assets, called surplus, for a number of reasons. In some cases, surplus is used to finance planned but unobligated capital expenditures such as information technology.

Selection in Massachusetts' Commonwealth Care Program: Lessons for State Basic Health Plans

This brief analyzes risk selection over time in Massachusetts' Commonwealth Care program, which serves low-income adults ineligible for Medicaid, much like a Basic Health Plan under the Affordable Care Act.

Reducing Hospital Readmissions in New York State: A Simulation Analysis of Alternative Payment Incentives

This report estimates the effects of reimbursement strategies and provider-level interventions to reduce hospital readmissions.

Enrolling the Eligible: Lessons for the Funders

This article describes lessons from Covering Kids & Families® (CKF) and covers topics such as how outreach, simplification, and coordination increase enrollment of low-income children and their families in Medicaid and SCHIP.

Price and Income Elasticity of the Demand for Health Insurance and Health Care Services: A Critical Review of the Literature

Resolving the national debate on health care affordability is likely to involve determining how consumer demand for health insurance and health care responds to changes in price or income.

The Cost of Medigap Prescription Drug Coverage

Examines the price of the standard Medigap policies (H, I, and J) that cover prescription drugs. Notes that premiums for these policies are high, at about $1,400 per year for minimum coverage, with wide state variation.