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The Doctor Might See You Now: The Supply Side Effects of Public Health Insurance Expansions

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  • Craig L. Garthwaite

Abstract

In the United States, public health insurance programs cover over 90 million individuals. Changes in the scope of these programs, such as the Medicaid expansions under the recently passed Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, may have large effects on physician behavior. This study finds that following the implementation of the State Children's Health Insurance Program, physicians decreased the number of hours spent with patients, but increased their participation in the expanded program. Suggestive evidence is found that this decrease in hours was a result of shorter office visits. These findings are consistent with the predictions from a mixed-economy model of physician behavior with public and private payers and also provide evidence of crowd out resulting from the creation of SCHIP.

Suggested Citation

  • Craig L. Garthwaite, 2011. "The Doctor Might See You Now: The Supply Side Effects of Public Health Insurance Expansions," NBER Working Papers 17070, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:17070
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Freedman, Seth & Lin, Haizhen & Simon, Kosali, 2015. "Public health insurance expansions and hospital technology adoption," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 121(C), pages 117-131.
    2. Koch, Thomas G., 2013. "Using RD design to understand heterogeneity in health insurance crowd-out," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(3), pages 599-611.
    3. Larry Howard, 2014. "Do the Medicaid and Medicare programs compete for access to health care services? A longitudinal analysis of physician fees, 1998–2004," International Journal of Health Economics and Management, Springer, vol. 14(3), pages 229-250, September.

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • H0 - Public Economics - - General
    • H4 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods
    • I1 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health
    • I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health

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