Physician Practice Preferences and Healthcare Expenditures: Evidence from Commercial Payers / Jeffrey Clemens, Pierre-Thomas Léger, Yashna Nandan, Robert Town.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Clemens, Jeffrey.

Contributor:

Léger, Pierre-Thomas.

Nandan, Yashna.

Town, Robert.

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w33090.

NBER working paper series no. w33090

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2024.

Summary:

We examine the relationship between physician preferences and both the intensity and cost of care delivered to commercially insured heart attack patients. We match survey data on physician preferences, collected by Cutler, Skinner, Stern, and Wennberg (2019) (CSSW), to medical claims data from the Health Care Cost Institute, which spans over 50 million insurance beneficiaries. In contrast to CSSW, who find strong correlations between aggressive practice preferences and both expenditure and utilization for the Medicare population, we find relationships that are both economically and statistically smaller in magnitude within the commercially insured population. Variations in commercial insurers' prices appear to play an important mediating role.

Notes:

October 2024.

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