Health Economics Commons^™

Aca Medicaid Expansions Did Not Significantly Improve Maternal Morbidity, Pinka Chatterji, Hanna Glenn, Sara Markowitz, Jennifer Karas Montez

Population Health Research Brief Series

Rising rates of severe maternal morbidity in the U.S. highlight the unmet need for continuous and comprehensive health care for women before, during, and after pregnancy. This data slice summarizes findings from a study that tested whether ACA Medicaid expansions helped reduce severe maternal morbidity, including transfusion, ruptured uterus, unplanned hysterectomy, eclampsia, and the need for intensive care. Results show little evidence that the ACA expansions improved maternal morbidity, other than reducing the need for blood transfusions.

Do Minimum Charity Care Provision Requirements Increase Provision Of Charity Care In Nonprofit Hospitals?, Michah W. Rothbart, Nara Yoon

Population Health Research Brief Series

Nonprofit hospitals receive significant federal, state, and local tax exemptions, partly based on the rationale that nonprofit hospitals provide public goods and services. Through Minimum Charity Care Provision (MCCP) requirements, nonprofit hospitals are required to spend a certain percentage of their revenues on charity care. However, it is not clear whether these requirements increase spending on charity care. This brief summarizes findings from research examining the differences in provisions of charity care across different hospital market sectors – non-profit, for-profit, and government. Findings suggest that MCCP requirements for nonprofit hospitals do not lead to more charity care. If anything, targeting …

Pregnancy Medicaid Expansions And Fertility: Differentiating Between The Intensive And Extensive Margins, Lincoln H. Groves, Sarah Hamersma, Leonard M. Lopoo

Center for Policy Research

The theoretical and empirical links between public health insurance access and fertility in the United States remain unclear. Utilizing a demographic cell-based estimation approach with panel data (1987-1997), we revisit the large-scale Medicaid expansions to pregnant women during the 1980s to estimate the heterogeneous impacts of public health insurance access on childbirth. While the decision to become a parent (i.e., the extensive margin) appears to be unaffected by increased access to Medicaid, we find that increased access to public health insurance positively influenced the number of high parity births (i.e., the intensive margin) for select groups of women. In particular, …

The Health Care Expenditure And Income: A Global Perspective, Badi H. Baltagi, Raffaele Lagravinese, Francesco Moscone, Elisa Tosetti

Center for Policy Research

This paper investigates the long-run economic relationship between health care expenditure and income in the world using data on 167 countries over the period 1995-2012, collected from the World Bank data set. The analysis is carried using panel data methods that allow one to account for unobserved heterogeneity, temporal persistence, and cross-section dependence in the form of either a common factor model or a spatial process. We estimate a global measure of income elasticity using all countries in the sample, and for sub-groups of countries, depending on their geo-political area and income. Our findings suggest that at the global level, …

Still “Saving Babies”? The Impact Of Child Medicaid Expansions On High School Completion Rates, Lincoln H. Groves

Center for Policy Research

Precipitated by the legislative decision to decouple child Medicaid benefits from welfare receipt, the number of young children qualifying for public health insurance grew markedly throughout the 1980s and early 1990s. From a baseline of roughly 15% in the average state at the beginning of the decade, the rate increased to more than 40% of all young children in the United States by the time all federal mandates were fully enacted in 1992. This paper extends the academic literature examining early childhood investments and longer-term human capital measures by exploring whether public health insurance expansions to low-income children led to …

Hospital Treatment Rates And Spill-Over Effects: Does Ownership Matter?, Badi H. Baltagi, Yin -Fang Yen

Center for Policy Research

This paper studies the effect of hospital ownership on treatment rates allowing for spatial correlation among hospitals. Competition among hospitals and knowledge spillovers generate significant externalities which we try to capture using the spatial Durbin model. Using a panel of 2342 hospitals in the 48 continental states observed over the period 2005 to 2008, we find significant spatial correlation of medical service treatment rates among hospitals. We also get mixed results on the effect of hospital ownership on treatment rates that depends upon the market structure where the hospital is located and which varies by treatment type.

The Influence Of New Medications On Prescribing Behavior By Practice Type: A Regression Analysis, Rita M. Pattarini

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

Objective: To determine whether the type of practice to which physicians belong influences the types of medications they prescribe

Methods: The study used data from the National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NAMCS) to conduct a series of regressions for two pairs of medications. The first pair was for the treatment of high cholesterol. Advicor was the new medication and Lovastatin was the competitor. The second pair was for the treatment of arthritis. Humira was the new medication and Remicade was the competitor. For each pair, there were two sets of regressions that consisted of an unrestricted regression with all patients …

Do Ct Scans Help Prevent Cancer-Related Deaths?, Auyon J. Ghosh

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

This paper uses a region-level estimation approach associated with medical procedures to identify the effectiveness of X-ray Computed Axial Tomography (CT) scans as a diagnostic tool in preventing cancer-related deaths. In order to measure the effects of the CT scan on cancer-related deaths, I use data from both the National Health Interview Survey and the Vital Statistics of the United States. For all four regions, we observe an increase in CT scan use after 1979 or, as illustrated specifically in the figure, from 1975 to 1980. All four regions exhibit marked increases in lung cancer-related deaths, very little fluctuation in …

Do Children's Hospitals Have Lower Mortality Rates? Evidence From The 2003 Kids' Inpatient Database, Christiane Labonte

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

Objective: To compare mortality rates at children’s hospitals and non-children’s hospitals.

Data Source: I used the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project Kids’ Inpatient Database (KID) released by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality in 2003. Thirty-six states participated in the HCUP in 2003, which included 3,438 hospitals, and 2,984,129 pediatric discharges.

Study Design: I hypothesized that mortality rates at children’s hospitals would be lower than mortality rates at non-children’s hospital because children’s hospitals have more specialized inputs, from the clinical training of sub-specialists and nurses to advanced machines and diagnostic tools, and may use these inputs more productively. To …