Hospital Choices, Hospital Prices, and Financial Incentives to Physicians

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Ho, Kate; Pakes, Ariel
• 署名单位: Columbia University; Harvard University
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0002-8282
• DOI: 10.1257/aer.104.12.3841
• 发表日期: 2014
• 页码: 3841-3884
• 关键词: competition; ORGANIZATIONS; QUALITY; models

摘要

We estimate an insurer-specific preference function which rationalizes hospital referrals for privately insured births in California. The function is additively separable in: a hospital price paid by the insurer, the distance traveled, and plan-and severity-specific hospital fixed effects (capturing hospital quality). We use an inequality estimator that allows for errors in price and detailed - hospital-severity interactions and obtain markedly different results than those from a logit. The estimates indicate that insurers with more capitated physicians are more responsive to price. Capitated plans send patients further to utilize similar quality, lower-priced hospitals; but the cost-quality trade-off does not vary with capitation rates.