In 2014 many uninsured, low-income nonelderly adults gained access to health insurance in states that expanded Medicaid eligibility under the Affordable Care Act. Federally funded community health centers were likely to be particularly affected by this expansion because many of their patients were uninsured and low income. We used a difference-in-differences approach to compare changes among 1,057 such centers in expansion versus nonexpansion states from 2011 to 2014, in terms of their patients' insurance coverage, the number of patients they served, and the quality of care they provided. Medicaid expansion was associated with large increases (12 percentage points) in Medicaid coverage and corresponding declines (11 percentage points) in uninsurance rates. The numbers of patients served increased in both expansion and nonexpansion states, and the magnitude of increase did not differ significantly between the groups of states. Medicaid expansion was associated with improved quality on four of eight measures examined: asthma treatment, Pap testing, body mass index assessment, and hypertension control. This analysis suggests that states' decisions about Medicaid expansion have important consequences for health center patients, with expansion improving treatment and outcomes of chronic disease and bolstering the use of recommended preventive services.

Introduction: Successful population‐level antiretroviral therapy (ART) adherence will be necessary to realize both the clinical and prevention benefits of antiretroviral scale‐up and, ultimately, the end of AIDS. Although many people living with HIV are adhering well, others struggle and most are likely to experience challenges in adherence that may threaten virologic suppression at some point during lifelong therapy. Despite the importance of ART adherence, supportive interventions have generally not been implemented at scale. The objective of this review is to summarize the recommendations of clinical, research, and public health experts for scalable ART adherence interventions in resource‐limited settings. Methods: In July 2015, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation convened a meeting to discuss the most promising ART adherence interventions for use at scale in resource‐limited settings. This article summarizes that discussion with recent updates. It is not a systematic review, but rather provides practical considerations for programme implementation based on evidence from individual studies, systematic reviews, meta‐analyses, and the World Health Organization Consolidated Guidelines for HIV, which include evidence from randomized controlled trials in low‐ and middle‐income countries. Interventions are categorized broadly as education and counselling; information and communication technology‐enhanced solutions; healthcare delivery restructuring; and economic incentives and social protection interventions. Each category is discussed, including descriptions of interventions, current evidence for effectiveness, and what appears promising for the near future. Approaches to intervention implementation and impact assessment are then described. Results and discussion: The evidence base is promising for currently available, effective, and scalable ART adherence interventions for resource‐limited settings. Numerous interventions build on existing health care infrastructure and leverage available resources. Those most widely studied and implemented to date involve peer counselling, adherence clubs, and short message service (SMS). Many additional interventions could have an important impact on ART adherence with further development, including standardized counselling through multi‐media technology, electronic dose monitoring, decentralized and differentiated models of care, and livelihood interventions. Optimal targeting and tailoring of interventions will require improved adherence measurement. Conclusions: The opportunity exists today to address and resolve many of the challenges to effective ART adherence, so that they do not limit the potential of ART to help bring about the end of AIDS.

The goal of Seguro Popular (SP) in Mexico was to improve the financial protection of the uninsured population against excessive health expenditures. This paper estimates the impact of SP on catastrophic health expenditures (CHE), as well as out-of-pocket (OOP) health expenditures, from two different sources. First, we use the SP Impact Evaluation Survey (2005–2006), and compare the instrumental variables (IV) results with the experimental benchmark. Then, we use the same IV methods with the National Health and Nutrition Survey (ENSANUT 2006). We estimate naïve models, assuming exogeneity, and contrast them with IV models that take advantage of the specific SP implementation mechanisms for identification. The IV models estimated included two-stage least squares (2SLS), bivariate probit, and two-stage residual inclusion (2SRI) models. Instrumental variables estimates resulted in comparable estimates against the “gold standard.” Instrumental variables estimates indicate a reduction of 54% in catastrophic expenditures at the national level. SP beneficiaries also had lower expenditures on outpatient and medicine expenditures. The selection-corrected protective effect is found not only in the limited experimental dataset, but also at the national level.