Despite a vast literature on the determinants of prescription opioid use, the role of health insurance plans has received little attention. We study how the form of Medicare beneficiaries' drug coverage affects the volume of opioids they consume. We find that enrollment in Medicare Advantage,...

U.S. physicians are increasingly joining multispecialty group practices. In this paper, we analyze how a primary care physician's practice type - single (SSP) versus multispecialty practice (MSP) - affects health care spending and use. Focusing on Medicare beneficiaries who change their primary...

Managed care may affect medical treatments for non-managed-care patients if it alters local market structure or physician behavior. We investigate whether higher levels of overall managed care market share are associated with greater use of recommended therapies for fee-for-service patients with...

Many questions about technology growth and development in health care call for a broad-based characterization of technology availability. In this paper, we explore the possibility of producing aggregated estimates of technology availability by constructing an index of technology availability in...

Increasing managed care activity could influence the adoption and diffusion of new medical technologies. This paper empirically examines the relationship between HMO market share and the diffusion of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) equipment. Across markets, increases in HMO market share are...

Increasing levels of HMO activity may influence health expenditures in other sectors of the market. Medicare provides FFS coverage to the majority of its beneficiaries and may thus provide a way of examining these so-called spillover effects. This paper examines 1986-1990 Medicare FFS...

This paper develops county-level estimates of HMO market share for all counties in the United States and uses them to examine the relationship between HMO market share and the fee for a normal office visit with an established patient charged by 2,845 fee-for-service (FFS) physicians. Two-stage...

The challenges consumers face in acquiring and using information are a defining feature of health care markets. In this paper, we examine demand for health information on the Internet. We find that individuals in poor health are more likely than those in better health to use the Internet to...

One of the key terms in contracts between hospitals and insurers is how the parties apportion the financial risk of treating unexpectedly costly patients. "Prospective" payment contracts give hospitals a lump-sum amount, depending on the medical condition of the patient, with limited adjustment...

During the last two decades, the treatment of infertility has improved dramatically. These treatments, however, are expensive and rarely covered by insurance, leading many states to adopt regulations mandating that health insurers cover them. In this paper, we explore the effects of benefit...