The Economic Consequences of Hospital Admissions

Carlos Dobkin, Amy Finkelstein, Raymond Kluender and Matthew Notowidigdo

Santa Cruz Department of Economics, Working Paper Series from Department of Economics, UC Santa Cruz

Abstract: We use an event study approach to examine the economic consequences of hospital admissions for adults in two datasets: survey data from the Health and Retirement Study, and hospitalization data linked to credit reports. For non-elderly adults with health insurance, hospital admissions increase out-of-pocket medical spending, unpaid medical bills and bankruptcy, and reduce earnings, income, access to credit and consumer borrowing. The earnings decline is substantial compared to the out-of-pocket spending increase, and is minimally insured prior to age-eligibility for Social Security Retirement Income. Relative to the insured non-elderly, the uninsured non-elderly experience much larger increases in unpaid medical bills and bankruptcy rates following a hospital admission. Hospital admissions trigger less than 5 percent of all bankruptcies.

Keywords: Patient Safety; Basic Behavioral and Social Science; Clinical Research; Aging; Behavioral and Social Science; Generic health relevance; Adult; Bankruptcy; Demography; Financing; Personal; Hospitalization; Humans; Insurance; Health; Medically Uninsured; Middle Aged; Patient Admission; United States; D14; Health insurance; I10; I13; bankruptcy; consumer finance; consumption smoothing; Economics; Commerce; Management; Tourism and Services (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-02-01
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (80)

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Related works:
Journal Article: The Economic Consequences of Hospital Admissions (2018)
Working Paper: The Economic Consequences of Hospital Admissions (2016)
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