Payer Type and the Returns to Bypass Surgery: Evidence from Hospital Entry Behavior / Michael Chernew, Gautam Gowrisankaran, A. Mark Fendrick.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Chernew, Michael.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Gowrisankaran, Gautam.

Fendrick, A. Mark.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w8632.

NBER working paper series no. w8632

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Other Title:

Payer Type and the Returns to Bypass Surgery

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2001.

Summary:

In this paper we estimate the returns associated with the provision of coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery, by payer type (Medicare, HMO, etc.). Because reliable measures of prices and treatment costs are often unobserved, we seek to infer returns from hospital entry behavior. We estimate a model of patient flows for CABG patients that provides inputs for an entry model. We find that FFS provides a high return throughout the study period. Medicare, which had been generous in the early 1980s, now provides a return that is close to zero. Medicaid appears to reimburse less than average variable costs. HMOs essentially pay at average variable costs, though the return varies inversely with competition.

Notes:

Print version record

December 2001.