Promo graphic for episode 1006 of Public Health On Call titled Public Health and Gambling: Part 1. Additional text reads: How gambling became so ubiquitous and the potential for problems.

Sports betting has exploded in popularity, but experts are becoming increasingly concerned about the public health implications.

@mattdeisenberg.bsky.social and @markmeiselbach.bsky.social discuss how to make online sports gambling safer.

🎧 podcast.publichealth.jhu.edu/1006-public-...

I am looking forward to future work on this project to explore enrollee retention and satisfaction in the plans and heterogeneous enrollment effects.

We are grateful for funding from @arnoldventures.bsky.social that supports this work!

We estimate that hundreds of millions are attributable to this benefit per month in 2024. Further, we find that the introduction of the giveback has a substantial effect on plan enrollment, with enrollment increasing >30% following the offer.

In MA, enrollees still pay Part B premiums even when a plan is "free." This can be $100s per month. Increasingly, plans have been using rebate dollars to "give back" Part B premiums to enrollees in their plans. This is becoming common, with ~19% of plans offering this benefit.

Medicare Advantage Part B Premium Givebacks and Enrollment This study evaluates trends and expenditures in Medicare Advantage Part B premium givebacks and their association with plan enrollment.

New paper out with Andrew Anderson, @laurasamuel.bsky.social, and Kali Thomas in
@jamahealthforum.bsky.social on "Medicare Advantage Part B Premium Givebacks and Enrollment"

jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

@bsph-hpm.bsky.social @johnshopkinssph.bsky.social

More below.

Major life update: this past week I was in Gouda, NL for the first cheese market of 2025 and came in second place in the guess-the-weight-of-the-cheese-wheels competition. This is probably my greatest cheese-related accomplishment.

Absolutely honored to win this year's James F. Burgess Methods Article-of-the-Year Award, along with @betsyqcliff.bsky.social @juliaedd.bsky.social and @markmeiselbach.bsky.social for our HSR article on deductible imputation in administrative claims datasets!
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

CMAP Faculty Andrew Anderson, Catherine Ettman, @markmeiselbach.bsky.social, and @mattdeisenberg.bsky.social presented in Venice at the Mental Health Outcomes, Services, Economics, and Policy Research conference. An unforgettable experience and way to share policy research around the world!

@markmeiselbach.bsky.social and I have a new piece out in "The Conversation" discussing our JRI paper on the effect of the Peak Health Alliance on health care premiums.

theconversation.com/lowering-the...

Our findings also suggest that premium reductions were likely driven by price reductions, as opposed to differences in plan design.

There are a number of aspects that made this coalition unique. However, our findings point to the potential effectiveness of the approach.

We evaluate the Peak Health Alliance in Colorado, which began offering plans in 2020. With 2017–2021 plan data provided by the CO DORA, we found that Peak's rollout led to a 13%–17% decrease in average premiums in 2020-2021.

Banding together to lower the cost of health care? An empirical study of the Peak Health Alliance in Colorado This paper evaluates the effectiveness of Peak Health Alliance, a public–private initiative in Colorado aimed at lowering health care costs for employers and enrollees by increased bargaining power t...

New paper out with @mattdeisenberg.bsky.social at the Journal of Risk and Insurance titled "Banding together to lower the cost of health care? An empirical study of the Peak Health Alliance in Colorado."

@johnshopkinssph.bsky.social #healthpolicy #econsky

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Our next steps will be to understand the drivers of these trends and understand the costs to expenditures at the state, federal, and individual level.

We are very grateful to @arnoldventures.bsky.social for funding this work.

We discuss the variation in this trend across states (see below). While there are some known causes, the drivers of this state-to-state variation is largely unknown. Further, how important is this? What are the costs? This is all vital to study, yet often unexamined.

Understanding The Long-Term Decline Of The Small-Group Health Insurance Market | Health Affairs Forefront Continued increases in premiums and underlying health care prices have likely contributed to the declining small-group health insurance market. And hospital consolidation is a well-known contributor t...

New Health Affairs Forefront piece out with Jean Abraham discussing the persistent long-term decline in the small group health insurance market.

www.healthaffairs.org/content/fore...

Provider directories remain really unreliable:
"Most notably, the analysis showed only 13% of provider contact information in directories were accurate and up to 44% of providers were unable to be reached due to inaccurate information in the provider directory"

www.insurance.pa.gov/Coverage/hea...

We did our best to identify all the "affinity plans" that we could, not including plans for VA and Medicaid beneficiaries which are somewhat different. Our list is public and we hope that other can use the list, build off of it, and refine: archive.data.jhu.edu/dataset.xhtm...

Finding #2: based on MA star rating system, the plans are generally of lower average quality or unrated. But not too surprising. The plans are very new, with >60% linked to a contract starting in 2021 or later.

Finding #1: these plans still have a small footprint (~50k enrollees), but it's rapidly growing. Enrollment is more than doubling year over year. The largest category are plans designed specifically for Asian American beneficiaries.

Trends and Enrollment in Medicare Advantage “Affinity Plans” - Journal of General Internal Medicine Journal of General Internal Medicine -

New letter our at @journalgim.bsky.social with Henry Larweh, Kali Thomas, and Andrew Anderson @johnshopkinssph.bsky.social. We identify and characterize the growing list of MA "affinity plans", marketed for the needs of underserved beneficiaries.

#healthpolicy

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Check out our work on the challenges accessing mental health provider using data from a very large secret shopper survey later today #APPAM2024

3. When D-SNP networks were specialized, they tended to include a larger share of specialists that commonly treat conditions more prevalent among dually eligible enrollees.

I learned a lot from this paper. Some key findings.
1. Only about half D-SNP plan provider networks were at all distinct from provider networks in standard MA plans offered by the same insurer.
2. These specialized networks were much more common among Fully Integrated Dual Eligible Plans (FIDEs).

Sage Journals: Discover world-class research Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

Enrollment in MA Dual-Eligible Special Needs Plans (D-SNPs) has more than tripled over the past decade, but how different are these plans from standard MA plans? Grace McCormack, Rachel Wu, and I investigate this question in the context of provider networks.

journals.sagepub.com/eprint/3B7KU...

Oops - need to check this app more often. I don’t know of publicly available aggregate data but they can be derived from claims. For example, the nicely named below paper used IQVIA. You can see the back and forth between providers/insurers: academic.oup.com/qje

New Research with @colemandrake.bsky.social and @egolberstein.bsky.social

We examine #ACA enrollment changes in GA after 1332 Reinsurance waiver.

We find:
A: Gross Premiums DOWN (GOOD)
B: 250-400 FPL Enrollment Down (BAD)

www.healthaffairs.org/doi/full/10....
1/N

New Health Affairs Forefront article, with Grace McCormack and Josephine Rohrer from USC, out discussing the issues plaguing mental health care access in the Medicare program.

www.healthaffairs.org/content/fore...

Hello Bluesky! The fall edition of the ASHEcon newsletter is here w/5 great articles!

1) Brandyn Churchill wrote a nice summary of the ASHEcon 2023 opening plenary on the U.S. Constitution and Health Equity, moderated by Marcella Alsan & feat. Sam Halabi, Caitlin Myers, and Kitt Carpenter

1/5

Agreed! I feel like there is not much drawing me here outside of just other academics. The things that keep me scrolling are often the non-academic posts and then I happen upon academic stuff in the process.

O’s O’s sign up in Baltimore

#baseball