Do Hospitals Have Status?
The results show that privately insured patients are less likely to choose a hospital if it served a larger number of Medicaid patients who were admitted through the emergency department in the previous 6 months. The effect persists over time — an additional 6-month lag cuts the effect in half. Capacity constraints do not seem to be the reason for the effect. I show that the Medicaid effect size could have a moderate effect on the profits of some hospitals. Although limited in scope, this study suggests that hospitals may experience a negative effect on their private revenues when they admit a large population of Medicaid patients.
Study here. HT: Jason Shafrin.
“I control for hospital fixed effects, hospital-specific time trends, patients’ driving time to the hospital, and interactions between patient and hospital characteristics. I also instrument for the Medicaid population using the predicted Medicaid population”
Very interesting study.
I’m not sure I understand this.
Wish I could read it. This would be interesting.
Of course they do. Is anybody surprised by this? Those that can afford to pay for private insurance expect to receive a “better quality” treatment than those under Medicaid. For most of this people, this means not going to the same hospitals Medicaid patients go to. I’m not saying I agree with it, I’m just saying this is the mentality of some, if not most, of people under private insurance. The same concept applies to just about everything else, wealthy people want to stay as far as possible from the not-so-wealthy ones. When this happens, then you have the issue of status. If you are wealthy, you receive treatment where wealthy people go, if you are under Medicaid coverage, then you know where you belong. As ridiculous as it sounds it’s a sad reality, I’ve heard several people refuse to go receive care where the non-private insured are able to go just because they “can afford better”. Ridiculous.
Very interesting results. Hospitals “experience a negative effect on their private revenues when they admit a large population of Medicaid patients.” I thought this was obvious.