This issue brief uses Medicare fee-for-service data to conduct illustrative analyses of primary care spending using a methodology that has been frequently used by policymakers and academics and can be applied to claims data. Although the estimates do vary substantially from each other as expected, trends in each of the four measures were fairly consistent over the three years analyzed, with the exception that all the estimates showed a decline in primary care and overall health care utilization during 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
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