This paper seeks to understand the impact of the Medicare Rural Hospital Flexi- bility (Flex) Program on rural resident hospital choice and welfare. The Flex program created a new class of hospital, the Critical Access Hospital (CAH), which receives more generous reimbursement in return for...

"We seek to investigate whether managed health care can affect mortality, and if so, through which mechanisms. We estimate the impact of Medicare+Choice (M+C), Medicare's managed care program, on elderly mortality, using a county-level panel from 1993 to 2000. We control for endogenous M+C...

This paper investigates the impact of Medicare HMO penetration on the medical care expenditures incurred by Medicare fee-for-service enrollees. We find that increasing penetration leads to reduced health care spending on fee-for-service beneficiaries. In particular, a one percentage point...