The Impact of Provider Payments on Health Care Utilization of Low-Income Individuals: Evidence from Medicare and Medicaid

Marika Cabral, Colleen Carey and Sarah Miller

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 2025, vol. 17, issue 1, 106-43

Abstract: Provider payments are the key determinant of insurance generosity within many health insurance programs covering low-income populations. This paper analyzes a large, federally mandated provider payment increase for primary care services provided to low-income elderly and disabled individuals. Using comprehensive administrative data, we leverage variation across beneficiaries and providers in the policy-induced payment increase in difference-in-differences and triple differences research designs. We find the payment increase led to a 6 percent increase in the targeted services for eligible beneficiaries, implying a payment elasticity of 1.2, and decreased the fraction of low-income beneficiaries with no primary care visit in a year by 9 percent.

JEL-codes: G22 I11 I13 I18 I38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/pol.20220775 (application/pdf)
https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/pol.20220775.appx (application/pdf)
https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/pol.20220775.ds (application/zip)
Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.

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:aea:aejpol:v:17:y:2025:i:1:p:106-43

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

DOI: 10.1257/pol.20220775

Access Statistics for this article

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy is currently edited by Matthew Shapiro

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