New HCFO Grants

Institution: Stanford University School of Medicine
Title: Price Responsiveness in Health Plan Choice: Evidence for Policymaking
Principal Investigator: M. Kate Bundorf, Ph.D.
Duration: 4/1/09–6/30/10
Paragraph Summary: The researchers will explore the issue of price responsiveness in selecting health plans. Specifically, they will 1) review and synthesize the literature on consumer price responsiveness in health plan choice; 2) summarize the key features of existing studies that produce an estimate of health plan price responsiveness; 3) express price responsiveness consistently across studies; 4) determine what factors explain differences across studies in estimates of price responsiveness; and 5) develop recommendations for policy analysts choosing parameter estimates for simulations. The purpose of this project is to provide researchers and policy analysts with information that will enable them to easily and effectively apply the results of literature on consumer price responsiveness in health plan choice to policy simulations.

Institution: University of Michigan
Title: The Effect of Public Insurance Coverage and Provider Reimbursement on Access to Dental Care: Evidence from the SCHIP Expansion
Principal Investigator: Thomas C. Buchmueller, Ph.D.
Duration: 4/1/09–3/31/11
Paragraph Summary: The researchers will examine the role that public health insurance plays in improving access to dental care for poor and near-poor children. Specifically, they will study low-income children to assess how Medicaid/SCHIP eligibility generosity affects dental care utilization. They will investigate how changes in program features and market conditions affected the supply of dental care to the publicly insured, addressing the following research questions: 1) What is the effect of public insurance on the probability a child has an annual dental visit? What is the effect on the total number of visits per year? 2) How does the effect of public insurance on dental utilization vary with key program parameters? 3) How do changes in public dental insurance programs affect provider participation? 4) What was the public dental health insurance environment in the states prior to SCHIP, and how did it change as a result of SCHIP implementation? and 5) How did states change dental provider reimbursement rates with the implementation of SCHIP? The purpose of this project is to better understand the effects of public dental coverage in order to inform related Medicaid and SCHIP policymaking.

 
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