Assessing access to care under Medicaid: evidence for the nation and thirteen states.
States have broad latitude in designing their Medicaid programs; this has important implications for access to care. To understand the consequences of state variation, we evaluate, for the nation and for thirteen study states, how well the program is providing access for beneficiaries, using the level of access available to low-income privately insured people in the local health care market as our benchmark. Overall, we find that Medicaid beneficiaries' access matches that of the low-income privately insured for most of the ambulatory outcomes examined but is worse for dental services and prescription drugs. State-level analyses revealed some variation in the access gap.
Coughlin
Teresa A
TA
Urban Institute, Washington, DC, USA. tcoughli@ui.urban.org
Long
Sharon K
SK
Shen
Yu-Chu
YC
D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D019538:Health Care Surveys; D006297:Health Services Accessibility / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006801:Humans; D007348:Insurance, Health / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D008297:Male; D008484:Medicaid / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D008875:Middle Aged; D011203:Poverty / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D011336:Probability; D013221:State Health Plans / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D014481:United States