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Journal Article
An Ounce of Prevention
Research Spotlight on the following paper: "The Effect of Primary Care Visits on Health Care Utilization: Findings from a Randomized Controlled Trial." Cathy J. Bradley, David Neumark, and Lauryn Saxe Walker. National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper No. 24100, December 2017.
Briefing
Medical Spending in Old Age
Older Americans' health care spending is relevant to many policy questions. Recent research shows that spending varies considerably with income, as do funding sources for that spending. Overall, the government pays more for lower-income individuals than higher-income individuals, but Medicaid is not just a program for the young and the poor. It provides substantial benefits to older adults with higher incomes as well.
Journal Article
The Rural Nursing Shortage
During the pandemic, policymakers and reporters have focused on the number of available hospital beds as a measure of the health system's capacity to deal with COVID-19 infections. But those beds don't matter very much without medical staff — doctors, nurses, and other trained specialists — to treat the patients in them. And after nearly two years on the front lines of the pandemic, health care workers are stretched thin.
Working Paper
Are Medicaid and Medicare Patients Treated Equally?
We examine whether Medicaid recipients receive the same health care services as those on Medicare. We track the services provided to the same individual as they age into Medicare from Medicaid at age 65, becoming dual enrolled. Cost sharing remains negligible across the insurance switch, implying that observed changes in service provision reflect supply-side factors. Service provision increases by about 20 percent upon switching to Medicare, across a range of categories and treatments including high-value care. We find that 60 to 90 percent of the increase in office visits is explained by ...
Working Paper
I've Got 99 Problems But a Bill Ain't One: Hospital Billing Caps and Financial Distress in California
We examine the financial consequences of the 2007 California Fair Pricing Law (FPL), a law that places a price ceiling on hospital bills for uninsured and financially vulnerable individuals. Using difference-in difference-in-differences models, we exploit cross-sectional variation in exposure to the law to estimate the causal effects of the FPL on different measures of financial distress. We find that the law reduces the medical and non-medical debt burden of individuals targeted by the law, with the likelihood of incurring non-medical debt in collections declining by 14.5 percent and the ...
Briefing
Declining access to health care in northern New England
Access to health care is a major concern across the northern New England states?Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont?where rising operating costs and population loss threaten the stability of hospitals and other medical facilities that serve their surrounding rural communities. New analysis of financial data shows that many rural hospitals are operating at losses that are predictive of financial distress or even closure. Consequently, the communities served by these hospitals may be at risk of losing the benefits they provide to public health and the local economy. Addressing the financial ...