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Deductibles in health insurance are often regarded as a means to contain health care costs when individuals exhibit moral hazard. However, in the absence of moral hazard, voluntarily chosen deductibles may instead lead to self-selection into different insurance contracts. We use a set of new...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10014213324
I investigate the relationship between physician pay, C-section use, and infant health, using vital statistics data and newly collected data on Medicaid payments to physicians. First, I confirm past results—when Medicaid pays doctors relatively more for C-sections, they perform them more...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10014120796
Primary care physicians have a central, coordination role in medicine, yet little is known about their impacts on healthcare utilization. I study the short-run and long-run effects of switching to different primary care physicians on utilization in terms of spending among Medicare patients over...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10014085515
We consider whether hospital acquisitions of physicians lead to improved clinical outcomes for Medicare patients aged 65 and older. The analysis combines 2005-2012 Medicare fee-for-service and enrollment data with merger and physician affiliation information from the Levin Reports and SK&A,...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012913873
Competition among health insurers is widely considered to be a means of enhancing efficiency and containing costs in the health care system. In this paper, it is argued that this could be unsuccessful since health care providers hold a strong position on the market for health care services....
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10003928694
We study the effects of "balance billing", i.e., allowing physicians to charge a fee from patients in addition to the fee paid by Medicare. First, we show that on pure efficiency grounds the optimal Medicare fee under balance billing is zero. An active Medicare policy thus can only be justified...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10009503927
We investigate the density of private physicians in a two-tiered health care system, i.e., one with co-existing public and private health care providers. In particular, we analyze how the densities of private and public suppliers of outpatient health care (general practitioners and specialists)...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10009731103
Deductibles in health insurance are often regarded as a means to contain health care costs when individuals exhibit moral hazard. However, in the absence of moral hazard, voluntarily chosen deductibles may instead lead to self-selection into different insurance contracts. We use a set of new...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10003785047
Many health economists demand more competition in the health care system. They focus on the competition between sickness funds for insured and the competition between health care providers for contracts with sickness funds. But they neglect the competition between health care providers for...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10003615904
Incentive contracts for gatekeepers who control patient access to specialist medical services provide too weak incentives to investigate cost further when expected cost of treatment is greater than benefit. Making gatekeepers residual claimants with a fixed fee from which treat-ment costs must...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011511048