In that study, opioid use was characterized in commercially insured and publicly insured populations over a 6-year period.
More than half of the commercially insured patients were insured via preferred provider organizations, but most Medicare patients had comprehensive coverage.
In contrast, individuals who were commercially insured or self-insured, as well as those with fair or poor HbA1c values had significantly higher total diabetes-related prescription drug costs.
The HIRD is an integrated medical and pharmacy-claims and laboratory-result database of commercially insured patients from 14 major commercial health plans across the US representing approximately 45 million patient-lives dating as far back as January 1 , 2001
The federal Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act (MHPAEA) sought to eliminate historical disparities between behavioral health and medical health insurance benefits among the commercially insured.
These findings were consistent in both commercially insured IMPACT® population, and Medicare-insured Humana® elderly population.
Commercially insured patients in the MarketScan® Commercial Claims and Encounters (Commercial; Truven Health Analytics; Ann Arbor, MI, USA]) and Medicare Supplemental Databases (Truven Health Analytics) were included in the analysis.
Finally, these study results are limited to the Medicaid population that is captured in the MarketScan Multistate Medicaid Database and may not be generalizable to all state Medicaid programs, commercially insured patients, or patients without health care insurance.
This study found lower utilization rates of many components of healthcare services among the commercially insured patients compared with those with Medicare supplemental insurance.
In addition, at each flare severity level, annual total costs in this Medicaid population were higher than those in a commercially insured SLE population (patients with severe flares: $$36,214 in commercial versus $49,754 in Medicaid; moderate: $11,125 versus $21,941; mild: $5,562 versus $17,574).
