Dive Brief:
- Though the Affordable Care Act did expand health insurance coverage, it didn't guarantee that doctors would be available or that they'd accept the insurance. And that has translated into patients who bought a plan on the marketplace being turned away, according to a new study from JAMA New Medicine.
- Researchers, who made calls to 10 states, had staff use a script to call primary care offices and request a new patient appointment.
- Staffers who claimed to be patients with private insurance had an 85% success rate for getting appointments, while those claiming to have Medicaid had a 58% success rate. Uninsured patients got appointments 79% of the time but only after saying they would pay cash for the visit.
Dive Insight:
After all the work of getting patients insured, many are still finding that they don't have the greatest access to care after all. Doctors and hospitals both are refusing ACA plans, including one case (Concord, NH) where the only hospital in town won't accept policies bought on the exchange. If the ACA rollout is to work as it should, it will be necessary to see to it that providers actually take the insurance. Getting that done will probably be very tricky however, given the politics around the ACA.