Ambulance Utilization in New York City after the Implementation of the Affordable Care Act

Charles Courtemanche, Andrew Friedson and Daniel I. Rees ()
Additional contact information
Daniel I. Rees: Universidad Carlos III de Madrid

No 11444, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Expanding insurance coverage could, by insulating patients from having to pay full cost, encourage the utilization of arguably unnecessary medical services. It could also eliminate (or at least diminish) the need for emergency services through increasing access to preventive care. Using publicly available data from New York City for the period 2013-2016, we explore the effect of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) on the volume and composition of ambulance dispatches. Consistent with the argument that expanding insurance coverage encourages the utilization of unnecessary medical services, we find that, as compared to dispatches for more severe injuries, dispatches for minor injuries rose sharply after the implementation of the ACA. By contrast, dispatches for pre-labor pregnancy complications decreased as compared to dispatches for women in labor.

Keywords: emergency medical service; ambulance; Affordable Care Act; health insurance; moral hazard (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I11 I13 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 28 pages
Date: 2018-03
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 (2)

Published - published as 'Association of Ambulance Use in New York City With the Implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act ' in: JAMA Network Open, 2019, 2 (6), e196419.

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp11444.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Ambulance Utilization in New York City after the Implementation of the Affordable Care Act (2018)
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:iza:izadps:dp11444

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().