Thursday, January 26, 2023 | The Latest Research, Commentary, And News From Health Affairs
Dear
John,
Don't miss our event on February 3, "Rational Health Care Spending Growth – Can We Get There From Here?" The event is open to all and you can register here.
Behavioral Health Cost Sharing and More
This month's issue of Health
Affairs covers a variety of topics like the effects of behavioral health cost sharing and health care spending.
From 2010 through
2014, Medicare phased in cost-sharing parity for outpatient mental health and substance use disorder (MHSUD) services, thereby reducing cost-sharing levels.
Fung and coauthors find that among White beneficiaries, the policy change was associated with an increase in relative rates of MHSUD specialty visits and medication use and a decrease in emergency department visits and hospitalizations related to MHSUD.
Elsewhere in the journal, Anne Martin and coauthors from the Office of the Actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) provide insights about national health care spending in 2021. They estimate that in 2021 health care spending in the United States increased 2.7 percent to $4.3 trillion, or $12,914 per person.
The authors' findings indicate that health care spending growth in 2021 was much slower than growth in the nominal gross domestic product (GDP), which increased 10.7
percent.
Today in Forefront, Cindy Mann and coauthors discuss a new approach to
budget neutrality unveiled by CMS in recently approved demonstrations in multiple states.
Health Affairs is the leading peer-reviewedjournalat the intersection of health, health care, and policy. Published monthly by Project HOPE, the journal is available in print and online. Late-breaking
content is also found through healthaffairs.org, Health Affairs Today, and Health Affairs Sunday Update.
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