First-dollar cost-sharing for skilled nursing facility care in medicare advantage plans

Table 1 Baseline characteristics of medicare advantage members enrolled in plans that did and did not add first-dollar cost-sharing for skilled nursing facility care

	Intervention plans	Control plans
Number of beneficiaries	75,044	97,914
Age (%): Age < 65	10.2	7.4***
Age 65-74	45.4	43.9
Age 75-84	33.0	37.5
Age 85 and over	11.3	11.1
Female (%)	57.5	56.6**
Race (%): White	76.0	89.9***
Black	19.3	5.4
Other	4.7	4.7
Financial assistance (%): None	86.6	91.0***
Part D Low Income Subsidy	6.5	4.5
Limited Medicaid	7.0	4.4
Mean daily copayments (range), in U.S. Dollars:
SNF, days 1–5	0.0 (0–0)	0.0 (0–0)
SNF, days 6–20	28.2 (0–93)	14.7 (0–87)***
Inpatient, days 1–7	32.5 (0–214)	88.1 (0–205)***

Based on authors’ analysis of data from Medicare Advantage and Medicare enrollment records. The study included seven intervention plans, which added first-dollar SNF cost-sharing, and seven matched control plans, which maintained having no first-dollar SNF cost-sharing for the entire study period. Percentages may not sum to 100 due to rounding. For each intervention plan and its matched control, the baseline year was the year before the intervention plan added first-dollar cost-sharing. SNF = Skilled nursing facility. We tested for significant differences between intervention and control plans using chi-square tests for categorical variables and t-tests for continuous variables. **p< 0.01 ***p < 0.001

ISSN: 1472-6963