Obamacare Patients Had Lower Drug Spending Than Patients In Employer Plans
A scholarly study of data from America’s largest pharmacy benefits manager concludes that Obamacare beneficiaries had lower drug spending than people in employer-based plans:
We used data from January–September 2014 on more than one million Marketplace enrollees from Express Scripts, the largest pharmacy benefit management company in the United States. We compared the characteristics and medication use between early and late Marketplace enrollees and between all Marketplace enrollees and enrollees with employer-sponsored insurance. Among Marketplace enrollees, we found that those who enrolled earlier (October 2013–February 2014) were older and used more medication than later enrollees. Marketplace enrollees, as a whole, had lower average drug spending and were less likely to use most medication classes than the employer-sponsored comparison group. However, Marketplace enrollees were more likely to use medicines for hepatitis C and particularly for HIV.
These are startling findings, and even contrary to earlier releases from Express Scripts itself. It does not seem consistent with emerging evidence that insurers are jacking up their Obamacare rates for 2016 because of higher than expected claims experience.
Here’s something to think about,
According to the study, the earliest enrollees were “older” and did have higher Rx utilization.
Later enrollees were therefore presumably younger and for whatever reasons did have lesser utilization.
It is possible that this later group was actually healthier. Not simply because they were “younger” but because this group included people who had deliberately chosen to be uninsured – the so-called “immortals”. It’s plausible (at least to me) that this group was much healthier on average than either the earlier Obamacare enrollees, or the non-obamacare control group. Now of course this group of later Obamacare enrollees is required to enroll or pay the penalty,
Just a thought.
No doubt, you are correct. There was a big sales and marketing push to get these folks to enroll.