Impact of hospital closures on rural economies

Not surprisingly, the impact is significant. That is according to a study by Malone et al. (2022), estimated using a difference-in-difference design with data between 2001 and 2018. Specifically, they find: Of the 1759 nonmetro counties in our study sample, 109 experienced a hospital closure during the study period. Relative to the nonclosure counterfactual, closures…

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Progress and pitfalls of bundled payment. Direct-to-employer contracting. Are bad online reviews an indicator of quality?  Racial disparities and fear of COVID. Coverage after the public health emergency ends.

Preferred Pharmacies in Medicare Part D

Medicare Part D plans have begun using preferred pharmacy networks in order to steer their beneficiaries to lower cost pharmacies. A key question is, does this work? A paper by Xu et al. (2022) aims to answer this question using 2011-2016 data. that compares Low Income Subsidy (LIS) Medicare beneficiaries and non-LIS beneficiaries. LIS beneficiaries…

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Operation Warp Speed for nasal COVID-19 vaccines? End of the airplane mask mandate? How should you think of copay coupons? Does access to affordable housing reduce child abuse? “Increased substance abuse accounts for between 9 and 26 percent of the decline in prime-age labor-force participation between February 2020 and June 2021”

When is full health insurance not optimal

In many markets, however, we observe that lower income individuals do not purchase the most generous forms of health insurance. For instance, despite the passage of the Affordable Care Act–which provided subsidies to lower income individuals to purchase relatively generous insurance–some individuals preferred the less generous Association Health Plans (AHPs) also known as “skinny” health…

Benefits of a Healthy Workforce

That is the title of a recent FTI Journal article from my colleague Margaret E. Guerin-Calvert, the President, of FTI Consulting’s Center for Healthcare Economics and Policy. An excerpt is below. Indeed, pre-pandemic data collected by FTI Consulting’s Center for Healthcare Economics and Policy for two metropolitan areas, Buffalo and Nashville, portends trouble. Just three chronic conditions…