Financial Vulnerability Among Medicare Managed CareEnrollees

Consumer Assessment of Health PlansSurvey data show that Medicaremanaged care plans often receive low satis-faction scores from certain vulnerable pop-ulations. This article describes findingsfrom a qualitative study with beneficiariesabout their Medicare managed care experi-ences. Focus groups were stratified by par-ticipant race/ethnicity and self-describedhealth status. Yet participants did notdescribe their concerns in terms of theirrace, ethnicity, or health condition, butrather their access to financial resources.Our findings suggest that researchers con-sider how socioeconomics creates healthcare vulnerability for racial and ethnicminorities, females, people with disabili-ties, and other economically marginalizedpersons.INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW