Insurance, race/ethnicity, and sex in the search for a new physician

•Audit national random sample of primary care physicians to assess access to care.•Examine racial/ethnic, sex, and insurance-based differences in appointment offers.•Find disparities in access that are larger than those in insurance-based studies.•Provide baseline estimates to evaluate key provisions of the Affordable Care Act.

We employed simulated patient calls to a national random sample of primary care physicians to assess appointment availability for adults who differed by insurance, race/ethnicity, and sex. The disparities we found are much larger than those reported in previous assessments, highlighting the importance of including race/ethnicity and sex in such research.