Firm responses to targeted consumer incentives: Evidence from reference pricing for surgical services

Physician responses to insurance benefit restrictions: The case of ophthalmology

This study examines the impact of social insurance benefit restrictions on physician behaviour, using ophthalmologists as a case study. We examine whether ophthalmologists use their market power to alter their fees and rebates across services to compensate for potential policy-induced income losses. The results show that ophthalmologists substantially reduced their fees and rebates for services directly targeted by the benefit restriction compared to other medical specialists' fees and rebates. There is also some evidence that they increased their fees for services that were not targeted. High-fee charging ophthalmologists exhibited larger fee and rebate responses while the low-fee charging group raise their rebates to match the reference price provided by the policy environment.

Private equity and healthcare firm behavior: Evidence from ambulatory surgery centers

Healthcare firms regularly seek outside capital; yet, we have an incomplete understanding of external investor influence on provider behavior. We investigate the effects of private equity investment, divestment, and an initial public offering (IPO) on ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs). Throughput is unchanged while charges grow by up to 50% for the same service mix. Affected ASCs witness declines in privately insured cases and rely more on Medicare business. Private equity increases physician ASC ownership stakes, and both simultaneously divest when the ASC is sold. Our findings appear more consistent with private equity influencing the financing of ASCs, rather than treatment approaches.

Tiered cost sharing and health care demand

In this paper, I study tiered cost sharing, an innovative incentive structure designed to steer patients toward low-cost providers using large out-of-pocket price differentials. Using administrative data from New Hampshire, where two large insurers utilize tiered pricing programs, I estimate the effects of tiering on choices and spending for common gastrointestinal endoscopic procedures. I first conduct a difference-in-differences analysis using the rollout of one insurer's tiered option. I then develop and estimate a demand model to explicitly compare the tiered design with other common plans. Both the reduced form and structural models imply that the tiered plans are associated with 4.5%-6.3% less in mean per-episode spending than high-deductible and coinsurance-based plans, and do not affect the likelihood of seeking care. I find evidence that the savings is in part due to a salience or "simple pricing" effect whereby patients respond to tiered out-of-pocket prices but not to traditional deductibles or coinsurance rates.

Coinsurance vs. co-payments: Reimbursement rules for a monopolistic medical product with competitive health insurers

This paper studies a market for a medical product in which there is perfect competition among health insurers, while the good is sold by a monopolist. Individuals differ in their severity of illness and there is ex postmoral hazard. We consider two regimes: one in which insurers use coinsurance rates (ad valorem reimbursements) and one in which insurers use co-payments (specific reimbursements). We show that the induced equilibrium with co-payments involves a lower producer price and a higher level of welfare for consumers even though it may imply a larger consumer price. This result provides strong support for a reference price based reimbursement policy.

Trading spaces: Medicare's regulatory spillovers on treatment setting for non-Medicare patients

Medicare pricing is known to indirectly influence provider prices and care provision for non-Medicare patients; however, Medicare's regulatory externalities beyond fee-setting are less well understood. We study how physicians' outpatient surgery choices for non-Medicare patients responded to Medicare removing a ban on ambulatory surgery center (ASC) use for a specific procedure. Following the rule change, surgeons began reallocating both Medicare and commercially insured patients to ASCs. Specifically, physicians became 70% more likely to use ASCs for the policy-targeted procedure among their non-Medicare patients. These novel findings demonstrate that Medicare rulemaking affects physician behavior beyond the program's statutory scope.

Is physician location sensitive to changes in patients' financial responsibility?

This study examines how changes to patients' financial responsibility affect physicians' behavior. This is achieved by examining a health insurance reform that changes patients' relative financial responsibilities for a medical service that can be received at one of two locations. In particular, this study examines how physicians' treatment location decisions change after the reform. This study finds that physicians who previously work across the two locations are increasingly observed working at the location that becomes cheaper for patients. Thus, physicians' responsiveness to new policies may be an important lever by which certain demand-side health insurance reforms successfully operate.

Long-run growth of ambulatory surgery centers 1990-2015 and Medicare payment policy

OBJECTIVE

To examine long-run growth in the ambulatory surgery center (ASC) industry and potential factors influencing its trajectory.

DATA SOURCES

National data for all Medicare-certified ASCs (1990-2015) and outpatient discharge records from the state of Florida in 2007.

STUDY DESIGN

We documented the number of ASCs in the United States over time and decomposed the trend into underlying ASC market entry and exit behavior. We then examined the plausibility of 2008 Medicare payment reforms to influence the trend changes.

DATA EXTRACTION METHODS

Data on ASC openings and closures are obtained from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Provider of Service files. Secondary data on ASC volume in Florida are obtained from the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration.

PRINCIPAL FINDINGS

The number of ASCs in the United States grew 5%-10% annually between 1990 and 2007 but by 1% or less beginning in 2008. This change coincided with substantive reductions in Medicare payments for key ASC services. The annual number of new ASCs was as much as 50% lower following the payment change.

CONCLUSIONS

ASCs are an important competitor for outpatient services, but growth has slowed dramatically. Sharp changes in new ASC entry align with less generous Medicare fees.

Treatment consolidation after vertical integration: Evidence from outpatient procedure markets

Hospital ownership of physician practices has grown across the US, and these strategic decisions seem to drive higher prices and spending. Using detailed physician ownership information and a universe of Florida discharge records, we show novel evidence of hospital-physician integration foreclosure effects within outpatient procedure markets. Following hospital acquisition, physicians shift nearly 10% of their Medicare and commercially insured cases away from ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs) to hospitals and are up to 18% less likely to use an ASC at all. Altering physician choices over treatment setting can be in conflict with patient and payer cost, convenience, and quality preferences.

Understanding the distributional impacts of health insurance reform: Evidence from a consumer cost-sharing program

We examine the heterogeneous effects of reference pricing, a health insurance reform introduced by the California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS), on the distribution of spending by patients and insurers. Using medical claims data for CalPERS and a comparison group not subject to reference pricing, we use the changes-in-changes approach to estimate the quantile treatment effects of the program across different medical procedures. We find that the quantile treatment effects vary across the patient spending distributions, with a range of positive and negative estimates of the QTE, depending on the medical procedure considered. However, across all procedures, the insurer's spending distributions tend to shift left, with the largest reductions occurring in the right-tail of the spending distributions. These effects are not captured by mean estimates but have important policy implications.

Does managed competition constrain hospitals' contract prices? Evidence from the Netherlands

In the Dutch health care system, health insurers negotiate with hospitals about the pricing of hospital products in a managed competition framework. In this paper, we study these contract prices that became for the first time publicly available in 2016. The data show substantive price variation between hospitals for the same products, and within a hospital for the same product across insurers. About 27% of the contract prices for a hospital product are at least 20% higher or lower than the average contract price in the market. For about half of the products, the highest and the lowest contract prices across hospitals differ by a factor of three or more. Moreover, hospital product prices do not follow a consistent ranking across hospitals, suggesting substantial cross-subsidization between hospital products. Potential explanations for the large and seemingly random price variation are: (i) different cost pricing methods used by hospitals, (ii) uncertainty due to frequent changes in the hospital payment system, (iii) price adjustments related to negotiated lumpsum payments and (iv) differences in hospital and insurer market power. Several policy options are discussed to reduce variation and increase transparency of hospital prices.

Provider responses to online price transparency

Price transparency initiatives have recently emerged as a solution to the lack of health care price information available to consumers. This paper uses the staggered and nationwide diffusion of a leading internet-based price transparency platform to estimate the effects of price transparency on provider prices. I find a 1-4% reduction in provider prices for homogenous services, laboratory tests, but find no price response for differentiated services, office visits. Price responses are driven by active consumer use of price information. This paper demonstrates how reducing consumer search costs can spur limited firm price competition in health care markets.

Reference pricing: The case of screening colonoscopies

We study the introduction of reference pricing to the California Public Employees' Retirement System. Reference pricing changes the relative price of using a hospital versus an ambulatory surgery center (ASC) for patients receiving a colonoscopy, leading to as good as random variation in patients' use of ASCs. We find a 10 percentage point increase in the share of patients using an ASC, leading to a $2300 to $1700 reduction in prices paid for patients who switch to ASCs. Our results suggest that the use of ASCs has a causal effect on prices paid and has no negative effect on patient health outcomes.