Text-based Disease Classification of Medical Literature

ABSTRACT: Oral cancer medications are an increasingly important tool for treating cancer but are costly for patients and insurers. By late 2014, 34 states and the District of Columbia had passed laws to ensure that privately insured patients pay no more for oral cancer therapies than they would pay for intravenous cancer therapies offered by the same health plan. The effect of these state policies on utilization and spending on cancer treatments is unknown. We used administrative health plan claims from three nationwide insurers aggregated by the Health Care Cost Institute, together representing 25% of individuals under 65 with employer-sponsored insurance across the U.S. The adoption of cancer parity serves as a natural experiment, allowing us to evaluate the effect of state cancer parity laws using a rigorous difference-in-difference-in-differences modeling approach to determine their effect on oral chemotherapy use and costs.