Health Insurance Expansions and Provider Behavior: Evidence from Substance Use Disorder Providers

Johanna Maclean, Ioana Popovici () and Elisheva Stern ()
Additional contact information
Ioana Popovici: Department of Sociobehavioral and Administrative Pharmacy, Nova Southeastern University
Elisheva Stern: Department of Economics, Temple University

No 1510, DETU Working Papers from Department of Economics, Temple University

Abstract: We examine how substance use disorder (SUD) treatment providers respond to private health insurance expansions induced by state parity laws for SUD treatment. We use data on the near universe of specialty SUD treatment providers in the United States 1997-2009. During this period, 16 states implemented SUD parity laws. Our findings suggest that admissions and client volumes increase following parity law passage, treatment shifts to less intensive settings, and quality is unchanged. Providers alter the type of payment they accept and patients they admit. We find no evidence that SUD parity laws improve public health, proxied by overdose deaths.

Keywords: healthcare; provider behavior; substance use disorders; health insurance mandates (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I1 I11 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea and nep-ias
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

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http://www.cla.temple.edu/RePEc/documents/DETU_15_10.pdf First version, 2015 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Health Insurance Expansions and Provider Behavior: Evidence from Substance Use Disorder Providers (2017)
Working Paper: Health Insurance Expansions and Provider Behavior: Evidence from Substance Use Disorder Providers (2017)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:tem:wpaper:1510

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