by horizontal hospital mergers as an instrument, we show that rising prices raise the cost of labor by increasing …

ownership affects hospital profitability and quality. We combine novel, patient-level transaction price data from a large …Between 2000 and 2020, the share of US hospital bed capacity under multi-unit firms (systems) increased from 58% to 81 … commercial insurer, Medicare claims, and New York hospital discharges between 2012 and 2018 to study changes at over 100 …

Privatization has been shown to increase growth and profitability of public firms. However, effects on consumers are … understudied. We study potential trade-offs in the US hospital sector where public control declined by 42% over 1983-2019. Private … operators may improve hospitals' financial performance, but a focus on profitability may adversely affect access to care for …

In 1991 the Health Care Financing Agency (HCFA) changed the reimbursement system for hospital capital costs from a … this paper we develop a model of hospital behavior in which non-profit hospitals maximize some combination of quantity … Medicare and Medicaid patients, concentration of the market in which they are located, and other hospital-specific factors …

With the spread of cost-based hospital payment systems in the United States in the 1960s, and the implementation of the … Medicare and Medicaid programs in 1966, rapidly rising hospital costs imposed unexpected pressures on Federal and state budgets … hospital investment and a significant minority of states enacted hospital price regulation (rate-setting) laws. As strong …