This paper seeks to understand the impact of the Medicare Rural Hospital Flexi- bility (Flex) Program on rural resident hospital choice and welfare. The Flex program created a new class of hospital, the Critical Access Hospital (CAH), which receives more generous reimbursement in return for...

This paper seeks to understand the impact of the Medicare Rural Hospital Flexibility (Flex) Program on hospital choice and consumer welfare for rural residents. The Flex Program created a new class of hospital, the Critical Access Hospital (CAH), which receives more generous Medicare...

This paper seeks to understand the impact of the Medicare Rural Hospital Flexi- bility (Flex) Program on rural resident hospital choice and welfare. The Flex program created a new class of hospital, the Critical Access Hospital (CAH), which receives more generous reimbursement in return for...

This paper seeks to understand the impact of the Medicare Rural Hospital Flexibility (Flex) Program on hospital choice and consumer welfare for rural residents. The Flex Program created a new class of hospital, the Critical Access Hospital (CAH), which receives more generous Medicare...

This paper analyzes dynamic oligopoly models where investment is the principal strategic variable of interest, there are a large number of investment choices, and there are privately observed shocks to the marginal cost of investment. We show that simulation methods to compute these models can...

We estimate a bargaining model of competition between hospitals and managed care organizations (MCOs) and use the estimates to evaluate the effects of hospital mergers. We find that MCO bargaining restrains hospital prices significantly. The model demonstrates the potential impact of coinsurance...