The Consequences of Health Care Privatization: Evidence from Medicare Advantage Exits
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pol.20160068.pdf
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835.01 KB
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Adobe PDF
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Author(s)
Duggan, Mark
Vabson, Boris
Gruber, Jonathan
Date Issued
February 2018
Journal
American Economic Journal: Economic Policy
Publisher
American Economic Association
Citation
Duggan, Mark, Jonathan Gruber, and Boris Vabson. “The Consequences of Health Care Privatization: Evidence from Medicare Advantage Exits.” American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 10, no. 1 (February 2018): 153–186. © 2018 American Economic Association
Version
Final published version
Abstract
There is considerable controversy over the use of private insurers to deliver public health insurance benefits. We investigate the consequences of patients enrolling in Medicare Advantage (MA), privately managed care organizations that compete with the traditional fee-for-service Medicare program. We use exogenous shocks to MA enrollment arising from plan exits from New York counties in the early 2000s and utilize unique data that links hospital inpatient utilization to Medicare enrollment records. We find that individuals who were forced out of MA plans due to plan exit saw very large increases in hospital utilization. These increases appear to arise through plans both limiting access to nearby hospitals and reducing elective admissions, yet they are not associated with any measurable reduction in hospital quality or patient mortality.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Economics
Terms of Use
Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1257/pol.20160068
