Hospitals as Insurers of Last Resort

Craig Garthwaite, Tal Gross and Matthew Notowidigdo

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 2018, vol. 10, issue 1, 1-39

Abstract: American hospitals are required to provide emergency medical care to the uninsured. We use previously confidential hospital financial data to study the resulting uncompensated care, medical care for which no payment is received. Using both panel-data methods and case studies, we find that each additional uninsured person costs hospitals approximately $800 each year. Increases in the uninsured population also lower hospital profit margins, suggesting that hospitals do not pass along all uncompensated-care costs to other parties such as hospital employees or privately insured patients. A hospital's uncompensated-care costs also increase when a neighboring hospital closes.

JEL-codes: G22 I11 I13 L25 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
Note: DOI: 10.1257/app.20150581
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (28)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/app.20150581 (application/pdf)
https://www.aeaweb.org/content/file?id=6020 (application/zip)
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/attachments?retrie ... qNic2t1joQVRq918vQVE (application/pdf)
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/attachments?retrie ... UYtNeP96S02BYJIj-bBx (application/zip)
Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Hospitals as Insurers of Last Resort (2015)
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:aea:aejapp:v:10:y:2018:i:1:p:1-39

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/subscriptions

Access Statistics for this article

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics is currently edited by Alexandre Mas

More articles in American Economic Journal: Applied Economics from American Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michael P. Albert ().