This paper investigates whether hospitals respond in profit-maximizing ways to changes in diagnosis-specific prices determined by Medicare's Prospective Payment System and other public and private insurers. Previous studies have been unable to isolate this response because changes in...

One of the benefits commonly claimed for expanded public health insurance is improved efficiency of medical care delivery, but this claim has little rigorous empirical support. We provide such support by assessing the impact of the Medicaid expansions over the 1983-1996 period on the incidence...

One of the benefits commonly claimed for expanded public health insurance is improved efficiency of medical care delivery, but this claim has little rigorous empirical support. We provide such support by assessing the impact of the Medicaid expansions over the 1983-1996 period on the incidence...

Cross-subsidies are often considered the principal mechanism through which hospitals provide unprofitable care. Yet, hospitals' reliance on and extent of cross-subsidization are difficult to establish. We exploit entry by cardiac specialty hospitals as an exogenous shock to incumbent hospitals'...

"The NBER Bulletin on Aging and Health provides summaries of publications like this. You can sign up to receive the NBER Bulletin on Aging and Health by email. We develop a formal model to show how integration solves task allocation problems between organizations and test the predictions of the...

Cross-subsidies are often considered the principal mechanism through which hospitals provide unprofitable care. Yet, hospitals' reliance on and extent of cross-subsidization are difficult to establish. We exploit entry by cardiac specialty hospitals as an exogenous shock to incumbent hospitals'...

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...