Healthcare Coverage & Access

Health care provider taxes and state-directed payment policies in the Working Families and Tax Cut legislation are expected to reduce non-Medicaid prices by up to 3.5 percent in markets with provider taxes and reduce spending on Medicaid, commercial and Medicare coverage.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

This third report extends trends in claims data in this series into 2022, the first year post-NSA implementation. In 2022, the prevalence of out-of-network bills declined 15 percent for emergency services and 11 percent for non-emergency services furnished at in-network facilities relative to 2021.

The cost of raising a family in America is high and continues to rise, with inflation rising by 23 percent between 2020 and 2025. For working families, some of the largest nondiscretionary expenses continue to be health care and child care.

This report examines national trends in telehealth service delivery to enrollees ages 0-18 years from 2019 to 2021, by enrollee characteristics such as age group and race and ethnicity. Services delivered via telehealth to pediatric Medicaid and CHIP enrollees rapidly expanded with the onset of the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency (PHE) in 2020 and remained higher than pre-PHE levels in 2021.

This Issue Brief provides a descriptive analysis of postpartum health care use among the Medicaid population before and during the PHE, when the continuous enrollment condition was in effect.

This Issue Brief investigates how health insurance coverage, as well as healthcare access and affordability, has changed in recent years, with an emphasis on policies implemented from 2021 to 2024. Over 300 million Americans now have health insurance coverage. The U.S. uninsured rate has fallen significantly over the past four years.

The U.S. behavioral health (BH) workforce faces significant shortages and distribution disparities, hindering access to quality care and worsening health outcomes. A comprehensive, centralized database of BH providers is vital for advancing patient-centered outcomes research (PCOR), comparative effectiveness research (CER), and evidence-based policymaking.

The generic injectable drug market has recently experienced numerous shortages, which impose substantial public health costs. One potential cause of these shortages is low profitability of generic injectables. This brief examines the profitability of recently launched generic injectables.

During the pandemic period, telehealth utilization increased among both urban and rural enrollees in Medicaid, with urban enrollees sustaining greater gains in telehealth utilization at the end of 2021. This Issue Brief is part of a series of ASPE Issue Briefs examining changes in Medicaid utilization of services delivered via telehealth by enrollee and provider characteristics.