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 health care prices lowers both payroll and employment at firms … tax receipts by 0.4%, and increases unemployment insurance payments by 2.5%. The increases in unemployment we observe are …

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

private hospital capacity is vertically integrated, integration increases inpatient care spending by 6 percent and decreases … to high-quality non-integrated hospitals, resulting in plan networks that limit hospital competition. Whereas vertical … integration reduces double marginalization, skewed cost-sharing structures--and their effect on hospital competition--more than …

Recent policy proposals seek to regulate out-of-network hospital prices. We study how such regulation affects … equilibrium prices, network formation, and hospital exit. We estimate a structural model of insurer-hospital bargaining that … that reducing out-of-network prices would also lower negotiated prices, but potentially at the cost of narrower hospital …