Treatment effects of selection behavior in managed care plans: evidence from Medicaid

Carla S. Gomes ()
Additional contact information
Carla S. Gomes: Mount Sinai School of Medicine

Portuguese Economic Journal, 2003, vol. 2, issue 2, No 4, 109-129

Abstract: Abstract. This paper tests whether capitated payments to Medicaid managed care plans induce to plans’ strategic undercutting of treatment for specific diagnostic groups. I focus on treatment (measured by length of stay and cost) in acute care hospitals in Massachusetts. I use a “differences-in-differences-in-differences” approach, where the third differences compare treatment patterns between managed care plans that receive capitated payments with those that do not. I find that the first reduce treatment significantly more to mental health patients than to patients in other disease groups, whereas the latter reduce hospital resource use more uniformly across disease groups. These results highlight the importance of using payment mechanisms in public programs that reflect the variability in costs of beneficiaries.

Keywords: Capitation; Managed care; Medicaid (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2003
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10258-003-0021-8 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:spr:portec:v:2:y:2003:i:2:d:10.1007_s10258-003-0021-8

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... cs/journal/10258/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10258-003-0021-8

Access Statistics for this article

Portuguese Economic Journal is currently edited by Luís F. Costa

More articles in Portuguese Economic Journal from Springer, Instituto Superior de Economia e Gestao
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().