Disenrollment from medicare managed care among beneficiaries with and without a cancer diagnosis Journal Article
| Authors: | Elkin, E. B.; Ishill, N.; Riley, G. F.; Bach, P. B.; Gonen, M.; Begg, C. B.; Schrag, D. |
| Article Title: | Disenrollment from medicare managed care among beneficiaries with and without a cancer diagnosis |
| Abstract: | Background: Medicare managed care may offer enrollees lower out-of-pocket costs and provide benefits that are not available in the traditional fee-for-service Medicare program. However, managed care plans may also restrict provider choice in an effort to control costs. We compared rates of voluntary disenrollment from Medicare managed care to traditional fee-for-service Medicare among Medicare managed care enrollees with and without a cancer diagnosis. Methods: We identified Medicare managed care enrollees aged 65 years or older who were diagnosed with a first primary breast (n = 28 331), colorectal (n = 26 494), prostate (n = 29 046), or lung (n = 31 243) cancer from January 1, 1995, through December 31, 2002, in Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) cancer registry records linked with Medicare enrollment files. Cancer patients were pair-matched to cancer-free enrollees by age, sex, race, and geographic location. We estimated rates of voluntary disenrollment to fee-for-service Medicare in the 2 years after each cancer patient's diagnosis, adjusted for plan characteristics and Medicare managed care penetration, by use of Cox proportional hazards regression. Results: In the 2 years after diagnosis, cancer patients were less likely to disenroll from Medicare managed care than their matched cancer-free peers (for breast cancer, adjusted hazard ratio [HR] for disenrollment = 0.78, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.74 to 0.82; for colorectal cancer, HR = 0.84, 95% CI = 0.80 to 0.88; for prostate cancer, HR = 0.86, 95% CI = 0.82 to 0.90; and for lung cancer, HR = 0.81, 95% CI = 0.76 to 0.86). Results were consistent across strata of age, sex, race, SEER registry, and cancer stage. Conclusion: A new cancer diagnosis between 1995 and 2002 did not precipitate voluntary disenrollment from Medicare managed care to traditional fee-for-service Medicare. © The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press. |
| Keywords: | aged; aged, 80 and over; major clinical study; case-control studies; united states; cancer patient; cancer staging; cancer diagnosis; neoplasms; colorectal cancer; demography; breast cancer; lung neoplasms; proportional hazards models; lung cancer; breast neoplasms; age; prostate cancer; colorectal neoplasms; kaplan-meiers estimate; confidence interval; prostatic neoplasms; health insurance; medicare; proportional hazards model; cancer registry; seer program; hazard ratio; cancer epidemiology; race; sex; medical fee; fee-for-service plans; managed care programs |
| Journal Title: | JNCI: Journal of the National Cancer Institute |
| Volume: | 100 |
| Issue: | 14 |
| ISSN: | 0027-8874 |
| Publisher: | Oxford University Press |
| Date Published: | 2008-07-01 |
| Start Page: | 1013 |
| End Page: | 1021 |
| Language: | English |
| DOI: | 10.1093/jnci/djn208 |
| PUBMED: | 18612131 |
| PROVIDER: | scopus |
| PMCID: | PMC3298965 |
| DOI/URL: | |
| Notes: | --- - "Cited By (since 1996): 1" - "Export Date: 17 November 2011" - "CODEN: JNCIA" - "Source: Scopus" |
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