We analyze the economic consequences of rising health care prices in the US. Using exposure to price increases caused by horizontal hospital mergers as an instrument, we show that rising prices raise the cost of labor by increasing employer-sponsored health insurance premiums. A 1% increase in...

We uncover political dynamics that reward and reinforce increases in US health spending by studying the passage of the 2003 Medicare Modernization (MMA). We focus on a provision added to the MMA, which allowed hospitals to apply for temporary Medicare payment increases. Hospitals represented by...

We study how privately insured individuals choose lower-limb MRI scan providers. Despite significant out-of-pocket costs and little variation in quality, patients often received care in high-priced locations when lower priced options were available. The choice of provider is such that, on...

We use insurance claims data for 27.6 percent of individuals with private employer-sponsored insurance in the US between 2007 and 2011 to examine the variation in health spending and in hospitals' transaction prices. We document the variation in hospital prices within and across geographic...

In this paper, we analyze the interplay between Congressional politics, the actions of the executive branch, and hospitals’ regulated Medicare fee-for-service payments. We focus on the 2003 Medicare Modernization Act (MMA) and analyze a provision in the law—Section 508—that raised certain...

The ability of the next US president to rein in spending on healthcare and improve the productivity of the healthcare system is largely going to determine the country's fiscal future. That is one of the conclusions of the latest in a series of US Election Analyses , published by the Centre for...

Zack Cooper outlines evidence on the benefits of competition in healthcare - and the implications for the coalition government's NHS reform plans.

The LSE Companion to Health Policy covers a wide range of conceptual and practical issues from a number of different perspectives introducing the reader to, and summarising, the vast literature that analyses the complexities of health policy. The Companion also assesses the current state of the art.