Care for Food-Insecure Enrollees in Medicare Advantage vs Traditional Medicare

AJMC July 12, 2021
Sungchul Park, PhD, Brent A. Langellier, PhD

Medicare Advantage plans may deliver care more efficiently to food-insecure beneficiaries than traditional Medicare, but they are not better at reducing food insecurity.

ABSTRACT

Objectives: To examine whether enrollment in Medicare Advantage (MA) and fee-for-service traditional Medicare (TM) is differential by food insecurity and then examine differences in health care utilization, financial burden, care satisfaction, and health status between food-insecure enrollees in MA and TM and between food-secure enrollees in MA and TM.

Study Design: We employed a retrospective cohort study design. Using the 2015-2016 Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey, we identified the following 4 mutually exclusive groups: food-insecure enrollees in MA, food-insecure enrollees in TM, food-secure enrollees in MA, and food-secure enrollees in TM.

Methods: We used an instrumental variable...

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