Narrow networks in Obamacare

From Tyler Cowen.

"That’s why the results of a recent study of new plans offered in California are especially troubling. Simon Haeder, a West Virginia University political scientist, and colleagues at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of California, Irvine, found that access to primary care physicians was relatively poor for a sample of plans offered through California’s Affordable Care Act Marketplace in 2015. Most Obamacare marketplace plans in California, as well as in other states, are narrow network plans.

Using a “secret shopper” approach, the study found that only about 30 percent of attempts for appointments with specific primary care doctors were successful. In this approach, an individual pretending to be a patient seeking an appointment called the offices of over 700 primary care doctors listed in marketplace plan directories.

In about 15 percent of cases, the doctor did not accept the caller’s plan, despite being listed in its directory. In nearly 20 percent of cases, the directory included the wrong phone number or the number was busy in two calls on consecutive days. Ten percent of doctors called were not accepting new patients. And about 30 percent of doctors called were not primary care physicians, despite being listed as such in the directory.

When callers were able to make an appointment, the average waiting time for a physical exam was about three weeks. In cases for which the caller pretended to have acute symptoms, the average time until an appointment was about one and a half weeks.

That is from Austin Frakt (NYT).  It seems to be an example of the kind of rationing many of us predicted for Obamacare, although I would like to see the comparable numbers for the pre-ACA years.  The piece has other points of interest, mostly about cost savings, which seem to be real."