Is Private Health Insurance Really Superior to Public Programs?

Managed Care Cast

In a recent paper published in JAMA Network Open, Charlie Wray, DO, MS, and colleagues examined experiences and opinions of nearly 150,000 Americans representing the 5 major forms of health insurance coverage. Specifically, the researchers used survey data from the 2016-2018 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System and compared access to care, cost of care, and reported satisfaction among those with public or private insurance. Representing the experiences of over 61 million US adults, respondents included Medicaid and Medicare beneficiaries, those with Veterans Health Administration or military coverage, and those with individually purchased and employer-sponsored coverage. On this episode of Managed Care Cast, Wray, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of California San Francisco, describes the surprising findings of the teams’ analyses, and offers some solutions to improving the quality of health insurance coverage in the United States.