On this episode of Managed Care Cast, we speak with one of the authors of a paper published this month in Health Affairs about the utilization of substance use disorder treatment (SUD) services between 2010 and 2019, and why more needs to be done to get more individuals into treatment.
Drug overdose deaths are skyrocketing, with more than 100,000 people dying in 2021, according to the CDC. Obtaining treatment for substance use disorders (SUDs) has never been easy, and this month in Health Affairs, a paper examined trends in the use of treatment services to see what, if anything, changed from 2010 to 2019.
Despite an increase in insurance coverage over much of that time period and other policy changes, the results were disappointing, according to one of the authors interviewed about the findings on today’s Managed Care Cast. Brendan Saloner, PhD, is an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who specializes in health policy, particularly policies that affect vulnerable populations, including those with SUDs and behavioral or mental health issues.
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Managed Care Reflections: A Q&A With A. Mark Fendrick, MD, and Michael E. Chernew, PhD
December 2nd 2025To mark the 30th anniversary of The American Journal of Managed Care (AJMC), each issue in 2025 includes a special feature: reflections from a thought leader on what has changed—and what has not—over the past 3 decades and what’s next for managed care. The December issue features a conversation with AJMC Co–Editors in Chief A. Mark Fendrick, MD, director of the Center for Value-Based Insurance Design and a professor at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor; and Michael E. Chernew, PhD, the Leonard D. Schaeffer Professor of Health Care Policy and the director of the Healthcare Markets and Regulation Lab at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts.
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