Politics and Health Care Spending in the United States

Zack Cooper, Amanda Kowalski, Eleanor N Powell and Jennifer Wu

No 23748, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We uncover political dynamics that reward and reinforce increases in US health spending by studying the passage of the 2003 Medicare Modernization (MMA). We focus on a provision added to the MMA, which allowed hospitals to apply for temporary Medicare payment increases. Hospitals represented by members of Congress who voted ‘Yea’ to the MMA were more likely to receive payment increases. The payment increases raised local health spending and led to suggestive increases in health sector employment. Members of Congress representing hospitals that got a payment increase received large increases in campaign contributions before and after the program was extended.

JEL-codes: D72 H51 I10 I18 P16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-hea and nep-pol
Note: EH
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w23748.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:23748

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w23748

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().