Three Essays on Market Structure, Competition, Prices, Health Spending, and Quality in the US Healthcare System

Three Essays on Market Structure, Competition, Prices, Health Spending, and Quality in the US Healthcare System PDF Author: James R Godwin
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
The United States spends a larger percentage of GDP on healthcare than any other OECD nation, and yet it performs poorly on measures of access, process quality and outcomes relative to other wealthy nations. One hypothesis that may explain the relatively poor performance of the United States' healthcare system per dollar spent is that markets for hospitals, physician services, and insurance are highly consolidated and lack competition. This dissertation contributes to the body of literature seeking to measure healthcare market structure and assess the relationship between this market structure and unit prices, overall spending, and healthcare quality. The first paper in this dissertation, "The Association between Hospital-Physician Vertical Integration and Outpatient Physician Prices Paid by Commercial Insurers: New Evidence," demonstrates market-level associations between vertical integration among hospitals and physicians and higher prices for outpatient care. The second essay, "How Hospital-Owned Physician Organizations are Associated with Healthcare Prices, Expenditures, and Quality," analyzes vertical integration and prices, quality, and total patient spending, building on the findings of the first essay using physician and hospital level claims data. This study finds that vertical integration is associated with higher levels of annual spending for patients attributed to vertically integrated providers, but interpretation of association between vertical integration and outpatient prices is confounded by pre-intervention trends. Analysis of CMS hospital outcome measures does not show associations between vertical integration at a hospital level and quality. Finally, the third essay, "Automated Delineation of Hospital Market Boundaries in California," explores geographic market definition in healthcare, an important topic in research and antitrust action, while assessing the application of community detection methods in this field. This study finds that community detection methods group hospitals with higher accuracy than other geographic markets as measured by patient flows and may offer promise for merger screening, research on market concentration, and research on geographic variation in healthcare. The final chapter reviews overarching limitations of the dissertation, outlines directions for future research, and comments on potential policy approaches to promote competition and address the symptoms that may result from highly consolidated healthcare markets

Three Essays on Market Structure, Competition, Prices, Health Spending, and Quality in the US Healthcare System

Three Essays on Market Structure, Competition, Prices, Health Spending, and Quality in the US Healthcare System PDF Author: James R Godwin
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
The United States spends a larger percentage of GDP on healthcare than any other OECD nation, and yet it performs poorly on measures of access, process quality and outcomes relative to other wealthy nations. One hypothesis that may explain the relatively poor performance of the United States' healthcare system per dollar spent is that markets for hospitals, physician services, and insurance are highly consolidated and lack competition. This dissertation contributes to the body of literature seeking to measure healthcare market structure and assess the relationship between this market structure and unit prices, overall spending, and healthcare quality. The first paper in this dissertation, "The Association between Hospital-Physician Vertical Integration and Outpatient Physician Prices Paid by Commercial Insurers: New Evidence," demonstrates market-level associations between vertical integration among hospitals and physicians and higher prices for outpatient care. The second essay, "How Hospital-Owned Physician Organizations are Associated with Healthcare Prices, Expenditures, and Quality," analyzes vertical integration and prices, quality, and total patient spending, building on the findings of the first essay using physician and hospital level claims data. This study finds that vertical integration is associated with higher levels of annual spending for patients attributed to vertically integrated providers, but interpretation of association between vertical integration and outpatient prices is confounded by pre-intervention trends. Analysis of CMS hospital outcome measures does not show associations between vertical integration at a hospital level and quality. Finally, the third essay, "Automated Delineation of Hospital Market Boundaries in California," explores geographic market definition in healthcare, an important topic in research and antitrust action, while assessing the application of community detection methods in this field. This study finds that community detection methods group hospitals with higher accuracy than other geographic markets as measured by patient flows and may offer promise for merger screening, research on market concentration, and research on geographic variation in healthcare. The final chapter reviews overarching limitations of the dissertation, outlines directions for future research, and comments on potential policy approaches to promote competition and address the symptoms that may result from highly consolidated healthcare markets

Competition and Quality in Health Care Markets

Competition and Quality in Health Care Markets PDF Author: Martin Gaynor
Publisher: Now Publishers Inc
ISBN: 1601980078
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 83

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Book Description
Provides an economic assessment of the impact of competition on quality in health care markets. This book offers performance standards for competition; findings from economic theory; and, empirical evidence on health care competition and quality.

The Economics of U.S. Health Care Policy: The Role of Market Forces

The Economics of U.S. Health Care Policy: The Role of Market Forces PDF Author: Frank W. Musgrave
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317457250
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 201

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Book Description
Designed as a primary text for courses in health care economics and policy analysis, this comprehensive work places the issues and economic analysis of the health care industry in the context of market forces driving the industry, including negotiated markets, managed care, and the growing influence of oligopolies. Written in accessible prose, without the aid of technical jargon and mathematical formulations, the content is rich with applicable, understandable economic concepts and analysis, and examples of market failure and government involvement. Some of the major policy issues covered are drug pricing, Medicare and Medicaid reform, the medically uninsured, for-profit hospital monopoly price power, managed care competitive pricing, and new negotiated markets. The relevant economic concepts employed in the text include price elasticity of demand/supply, market structure from competitive to oligopolistic markets, monopoly pricing power, measures of health care inflation and the biases of the CPI, demand and supply factors, inverse relationship of present health care expenditures as a percentage of GDP, measures/concepts of efficiency, and the role of government in a market era.

Essays on the Market Structure of the U.S. Health Care System

Essays on the Market Structure of the U.S. Health Care System PDF Author: Ayse S. Diebel
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description


Big Med

Big Med PDF Author: David Dranove
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022675684X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
There is little debate that health care in the United States is in need of reform. But where should those improvements begin? With insurers? Drug makers? The doctors themselves? In Big Med, David Dranove and Lawton Robert Burns argue that we’re overlooking the most ubiquitous cause of our costly and underperforming system: megaproviders, the expansive health care organizations that have become the face of American medicine. Your local hospital is likely part of one. Your doctors, too. And the megaproviders are bad news for your health and your wallet. Drawing on decades of combined expertise in health care consolidation, Dranove and Burns trace Big Med’s emergence in the 1990s, followed by its swift rise amid false promises of scale economies and organizational collaboration. In the decades since, megaproviders have gobbled up market share and turned independent physicians into salaried employees of big bureaucracies, while delivering on none of their early promises. For patients this means higher costs and lesser care. Meanwhile, physicians report increasingly low morale, making it all but impossible for most systems to implement meaningful reforms. In Big Med, Dranove and Burns combine their respective skills in economics and management to provide a nuanced explanation of how the provision of health care has been corrupted and submerged under consolidation. They offer practical recommendations for improving competition policies that would reform megaproviders to actually achieve the efficiencies and quality improvements they have long promised. This is an essential read for understanding the current state of the health care system in America—and the steps urgently needed to create an environment of better care for all of us.

Essays on Competition in Health Care Markets

Essays on Competition in Health Care Markets PDF Author: Xing Wu
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Over the last decades, health economics has turned into one of the most active research fields within economics. The structure of health care markets varies enormously across countries, largely influenced by competition among suppliers, the regulation of markets and patient preferences. This dissertation presents an analysis of health care markets especially focusing on price competition and quality competition. Under price competition, a pair of asymmetric pure strategy price equilibria exists in a model with income constraints for the specific case that two physicians locate at the maximum distance from each other and patients pay the same marginal transportation cost. Under quality competition, I investigate the interplay of market transparency and semi-altruism - a specific and interesting aspect unique to markets for health care. Market transparency and semi-altruism show ambiguous effects on welfare. The more altruistic physicians provides weakly higher quality than the less altruistic one. Moreover, I explore individual and social incentives for hospital mergers and their interaction with transparency and find that higher transparency does not always lead to higher quality and higher social welfare. The results indicate that quality is lower after merger. A hospital merger leads to a higher social welfare if the efficiency gains from the merger are sufficiently large. ; eng

Three Essays on Government Intervention in Medical Markets

Three Essays on Government Intervention in Medical Markets PDF Author: Sean McEwan Nicholson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description


Healthy Competition

Healthy Competition PDF Author: Michael F. Cannon
Publisher: Cato Institute
ISBN: 1933995106
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
Government control has driven health care costs sky-high at the same time that it has reduced the quality of care. As America's health care system cries out for reform, should policymakers embrace even more government planning, or should they fight for more individual freedom? In this updated edition of their 2005 book, the authors tackle proposals that would let government manage even more of America's health care sector. The continuing problem of ever-rising health care costs makes this book as timely as ever.

For-Profit Enterprise in Health Care

For-Profit Enterprise in Health Care PDF Author: Institute of Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309036437
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 580

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Book Description
"[This book is] the most authoritative assessment of the advantages and disadvantages of recent trends toward the commercialization of health care," says Robert Pear of The New York Times. This major study by the Institute of Medicine examines virtually all aspects of for-profit health care in the United States, including the quality and availability of health care, the cost of medical care, access to financial capital, implications for education and research, and the fiduciary role of the physician. In addition to the report, the book contains 15 papers by experts in the field of for-profit health care covering a broad range of topicsâ€"from trends in the growth of major investor-owned hospital companies to the ethical issues in for-profit health care. "The report makes a lasting contribution to the health policy literature." â€"Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law.

Competition and Monopoly in Medical Care

Competition and Monopoly in Medical Care PDF Author: Harry Edward Frech (III)
Publisher: A E I Press
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
Frech analyzes the changing nature of competition in this market, with a specific focus on competition among physicians, hospitals, and insurance companies.