By Luisa Franzini, Osama I. Mikhail and Jonathan S. Skinner
Health Affairs
December 2010
Medicare spending for the elderly is much higher in McAllen, Texas, than in El Paso, Texas, as reported in a 2009 New Yorker article by Atul Gawande. To investigate whether this disparity was present in the non-Medicare populations of those two cities, we obtained medical use and expense data for patients privately insured by Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas.
Variations In Medicare Use And Spending
Total price-adjusted Medicare spending was 86 percent higher in McAllen than in El Paso, and was 75 percent above the national average in 2007.
In 2007, Medicare enrollees in McAllen were far more likely to be admitted to the hospital and to die in the hospital than they were in El Paso. They were also much more likely to be seen near the end of their lives by more than ten physicians — a good measure for fragmentation, in that the involvement of a large number of physicians typically signals a lack of coordination of care provided to patients. Finally, there were sharp differences in the extent of cardiac surgical procedures; again, rates were higher in McAllen.
Variations For The Insured Population Under Age Sixty-Five
Surprisingly, and in contrast to the Medicare data, for the population insured by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas, total spending per member per year in McAllen was 7 percent lower than in El Paso. Although spending for professional and inpatient services were similar in the two regions, spending for outpatient services in McAllen was 31 percent less.
Use of medical services was also similar or somewhat lower in McAllen compared to El Paso. Inpatient admissions in McAllen were 84 percent of admissions in El Paso; professional and outpatient services in McAllen were 94 percent and 72 percent, respectively, of those in El Paso.
(Variations by age for those under sixty-five)
For those age fifty and younger, use rates were generally similar or lower in McAllen than in El Paso — particularly for the population ages 25–50, for whom use of inpatient, outpatient, and professional services in McAllen were 66 percent, 80 percent, and 86 percent, respectively, of those in El Paso. Patterns were similar for spending measures.
It was in the population age 50 and older – largely people ages 50–64 — that strong differences between El Paso and McAllen in the use of inpatient medical services and spending emerged. Indeed, inpatient admissions for the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas population age 50 and older were 89 percent higher in McAllen. Per patient inpatient spending for this same age group was 117 percent higher in McAllen — roughly the same difference as the overall difference in the use of Medicare services and spending. In part, the higher inpatient use of medical services and costs for this group are offset by lower outpatient medical services use and spending, leaving overall spending in McAllen for this age group 23 percent above those in El Paso. That is still well below the 86 percent Medicare differential between the two cities.
Conclusions
We have demonstrated that the sharp differences in the use of Medicare services between El Paso and McAllen, Texas, were not generally found in the population of Blue Cross and Blue Shield enrollees under age sixty-five in Hidalgo County (McAllen) and El Paso County. We considered several explanations for these patterns, including differences in prices, health, incomes, and other factors. Ultimately, we hypothesize that some part of the puzzle may be explained by private insurance companies and Medicare exhibiting very different interactions with local health care providers.
Thus, our study is consistent with Gawande’s finding of a “culture of money “— increasing the use of profitable Medicare services when there is diagnostic and procedural discretion and clinical latitude — but that such a culture may also be constrained by private insurance plans with their more stringent reviews of the use of medical services.
Because our study was limited to just two regions, we do not know to what extent providers may compensate for lower pricing from Medicare by negotiating higher prices, or cost shifting, to private insurance. Nor do we entirely understand why hospitalization rates for the privately insured residents of McAllen who are older than age fifty are so much higher — and outpatient rates so much lower — than in El Paso.
Further research is needed, such as the variations study mandated by the Affordable Care Act that is now being carried out under the auspices of the Institute of Medicine. But our preliminary results are consistent with the idea that health care providers can respond quite differently to incentives embedded in large federal programs such as Medicare compared to those present in private insurance programs.
http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/content/abstract/29/12/2302
And…
Study: Private insurance plans better at controlling costs
By Jason Millman
The Hill
December 7, 2010
Private insurance plans might be better at controlling healthcare costs than Medicare, according to a Health Affairs study released Tuesday morning.
And…
The Cost Conundrum
Posted by Atul Gawande
The New Yorker
December 6, 2010
A new study introduces a fascinating — and hopeful — wrinkle to the McAllen, Texas, cost conundrum.
I visited McAllen, some readers may recall, to speak with doctors and hospital leaders about why its costs for Medicare patients have, for going on a decade, run almost double that for Medicare patients up the border in El Paso—almost sixteen thousand dollars per person versus eight thousand three hundred dollars in 2007. The populations had similar levels of poverty and poor health. By many quality measures, the hospitals were, if anything, better in El Paso. Yet the Medicare data showed McAllen doctors ordering markedly more tests, more surgery, more specialist visits, more home health services, more hospital admissions, more everything.
Yet can we really extrapolate from the costs of older Medicare patients to all younger ones? After the article was published, Texas Blue Cross Blue Shield gave unusual access to the complete cost files of their members under the age of sixty-five to researchers at the University of Texas School of Public Health and Dartmouth. This week, in the journal Health Affairs, the researchers published their findings. They discovered a shift with age. For members fifty or older, McAllen was indeed significantly more expensive than El Paso. But for those under fifty, McAllen was downright ordinary — even less costly than El Paso. They had escaped high-cost care.
It’s true that employees younger than fifty with Blue Cross coverage are a somewhat distinctive group. They are healthier than average and account for only a small percentage of local health costs. Nationally, people older than fifty account for about seventy per cent of total spending; among people under fifty, the poor and disabled account for much of the rest. The overall cost problem remains. But there is an important revelati
on here: not all the health care in a high-cost community has to be out of whack. The questions we then must ask are why the pattern is different for some groups of people, and whether such differences suggest ways to change the pattern for everyone.
There are two main explanations for the discrepancy: McAllen doctors could simply offer a lower-cost care for the kinds of conditions people under fifty have (pregnancies and traumatic injuries tend to be the big-ticket items); or Blue Cross could be particularly effective at restricting overspending. It’s hard to know which is the answer. Looking at the evidence available, we can’t be sure. But I am rooting for the idea that Blue Cross is making a difference.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2010/12/the-cost-conundrum.html
Comment:
By Don McCanne, MD
According to this new study published in Health Affairs, the widely-publicized differences in Medicare use and spending between McAllen and El Paso did not occur in those individuals covered by Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas (BCBST), at least not quite. Today the media are reporting this study as demonstrating that private insurance plans are better at controlling costs than is Medicare. A closer look at the findings should make us question this conclusion.
Atul Gawande’s original report certainly confirmed that both health care use and spending in Medicare were much higher in McAllen than in El Paso, which he attributed to a culture of doctors in McAllen who treated patients as profit centers by increasing the intensity of services.
Is it true that BCBST was able to control the excesses of the McAllen physicians through managed care and other incentives? Or is there a more plausible explanation?
The population studied was insured by BCBST, which meant that, especially for the portion under 50, they were primarily healthy employees and their young, healthy families, certainly much healthier than the Medicare population. These individuals do not need much health care, and what they do use is quite straightforward. Preventive services, maternity care, fractures, acute illnesses and the such all have simple diagnostic and management algorithms. There really isn’t much leeway for adding superfluous services, so it is no surprise that use and spending would be about the same in both McAllen and El Paso.
What about the people over 50 on BCBST? These people are beginning to develop chronic disorders that do require more health care. During a continuum of care, there are more options for physicians to increase the frequency and intensity of services. For patients over 65 on Medicare, McAllen physicians do provide greater intensity of care, but does BCBST’s private insurer management techniques successfully control these excesses for patents under 65?
For BCBST patients aged 50 to 64, inpatient admissions in McAllen were 89 percent higher than in El Paso. Per patient inpatient spending was 117 percent higher in McAllen. Although outpatient use and spending were lower, overall spending was still 23 percent higher in McAllen for this age group. Besides, where are the real bucks? In the hospital or in outpatient care?
Gawande is “rooting for the idea that Blue Cross is making a difference.” Is an 89 percent increase in hospitalization rates really an endorsement of the management services that the private insurers keep selling us?
And the media? You would think that they would read the study before reporting on it (only 8 pages) instead of merely lifting a few points from the Health Affairs press release this morning. The title: “New Health Affairs Study Suggests That Private Insurers Control Health Care Spending Better Than Medicare.” Maybe the Health Affairs editors also should read their own articles before issuing press releases on them.
