A Comparison of Low Income ('Dually Eligible') Medicare Beneficiaries' Experiences with Special Needs Plans Versus Other Forms of Medicare Coverage

• Activity Number: 376
• Type: Invited
• Date/Time: Tuesday, August 5, 2014 : 2:00 PM to 3:50 PM
• Sponsor: Health Policy Statistics Section
• Author(s): Amelia M. Haviland*+ and Marc N. Elliott and Katrin Hambarsoomian and Nate Orr and Donna Farley and Alan M. Zaslavsky
• Companies: Carnegie Mellon and RAND Corporation and RAND Corporation and RAND Corporation and RAND Corporation and Harvard
• Keywords: propensity score ; doubly-robust ; causal inference ; disparities

Abstract

This study compares the health care experiences of dually eligible (DE, eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid) beneficiaries in D-SNPs (Dual Eligible Special Needs Plans), to the experiences of DE beneficiaries in non-SNP Medicare Advantage (MA) plans and original fee-for-service (FFS) Medicare coverage. The objective of these comparisons is to determine the degree to which D-SNPs have been able to positively impact the health care experiences of this vulnerable population. 14 measures of patient experience and immunization are compared using doubly robust estimation (propensity score weighting and regression-based covariate adjustment.