Who Pays for Rising Health Care Prices? Evidence from Hospital Mergers

Zarek Brot-Goldberg, Zack Cooper, Stuart V. Craig, Lev R. Klarnet, Ithai Lurie and Corbin L. Miller

No 32613, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We analyze the economic consequences of rising US health care prices. By increasing the cost of employer-sponsored health insurance, rising prices serve as a de facto payroll tax on labor. Using exposure to hospital mergers as an instrument, we estimate that a 1% increase in health care prices lowers payroll and employment at non-health-care employers by 0.4%. At the county level, a 1% increase in health care prices reduces labor income by 0.27%, increases flows into unemployment by 1%, and lowers federal income tax receipts by 0.4%. The disemployment effects of rising prices are concentrated among lower- and middle-income workers.

JEL-codes: I11 J30 L4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea, nep-ind and nep-lma
Note: EH
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w32613.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html. Free access is also available to older working papers.

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:nbr:nberwo:32613

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w32613
The price is Paper copy available by mail.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().