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©The Author(s) 2019. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Orthop. Feb 18, 2019; 10(2): 81-89
Published online Feb 18, 2019. doi: 10.5312/wjo.v10.i2.81
Published online Feb 18, 2019. doi: 10.5312/wjo.v10.i2.81
Mandated health insurance increases rates of elective knee surgery
Daniel Kim, Brandon Mahal, Radiation Oncology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02114, United States
Woo Do, Department of Surgery, Madigan Army Medical Center, Tacoma, WA 98431, United States
Shahein Tajmir, Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02114, United States
Joe DeAngelis, Arun Ramappa, Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02215, United States
Author contributions: Kim D, Do W, Tajmir S, Mahal B, DeAngelis J and Ramappa A substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; final approval of the version to be published; agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.
Institutional review board statement: This certifies that the action on the research study referenced was reviewed by the Committee on Clinical Investigations (CCI), the appropriately authorized Institutional Review Board and Privacy Board appointed to review research involving human subjects. This action was reviewed via Expedited review. This study approved for continuation for a period of one year with waiver of informed consent and authorization under expedited category #8.
Conflict-of-interest statement: Nothing.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Arun Ramappa, MD, Chief Doctor, Associate Professor, Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, Shapiro 2, 330 Brookline Avenue, Boston, MA02215, United States. aramappa@bidmc.harvard.edu
Telephone: +1-617-6673940 Fax: +1-617-6672155
Received: December 22, 2018
Peer-review started: December 23, 2018
First decision: December 30, 2018
Revised: January 11, 2019
Accepted: January 26, 2019
Article in press: January 26, 2019
Published online: February 18, 2019
Processing time: 58 Days and 13.5 Hours
Peer-review started: December 23, 2018
First decision: December 30, 2018
Revised: January 11, 2019
Accepted: January 26, 2019
Article in press: January 26, 2019
Published online: February 18, 2019
Processing time: 58 Days and 13.5 Hours
Core Tip
Core tip: We examined how an individual mandate in the United States may affect rates of knee surgery. This topic is of great interest as the United States thinks about moving to a universal coverage model and to countries that already have such a system. We found that the rate of surgery increased after the implementation of mandated universal coverage. Also, we found that patients on lesser reimbursing insurance plans were not discriminated against compared to private insurance plans.