Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
From what areas does a hospital draw on to fill its beds? There have been many attempts to define a hospital’s catchment area. The Dartmouth Atlas Group uses hospital referral regions (HRRs) and hospital service areas (HSAs). One method is to determine a minimum admission rate for a given geographic unit (e.g., county, census tract,…
If there is a boost in demand for a certain product, how will that affect wages? This seems like a straightforward question. However, a working paper by Enrico Moretti (2010) takes this analysis a step further by examining how labor market shocks affect the spatial component of the labor markets. “In general equilibrium, a shock…
The cost of running a hospital in New York City is much higher than running a hospital in Bozeman, Montana. To take into account these cost differences, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has created a wage index to adjust the inpatient prospective payment system (IPPS) for differences in labor costs. However, the…
A hospital in New York City faces higher labor costs than a hospital in Billings, Montana. To take into account these cost differences, Medicare adjusts hospital payments to reflect these cost differences using a hospital wage index. As currently constructed, however, many hospitals petition to be included in labor markets where they would receive a…
A bad economy should increase blood donation. As more individuals lose their job, they now have more free time to donate blood. The opportunity cost of their time is lower, since they don’t have to miss work to donate blood. A bad economy also creates more sympathy for those in need; thus, donor morale may…
Health Reform is at the top of President Obama’s list of reform efforts. Mr. Obama claims that not only will health reform improve the physical health of the nation, it will also improve its economic health. In a Council of Economic Advisers Report, President Obama lists three reasons why slowing health care costs and expanding…
In this blog, I have frequently discussed the concept of Job Lock. Job Lock occurs when you don’t leave a job that you wish to leave (either because it is low paying or you do not like the work) simply because you do not want to lose your health insurance. Leaving your current job for…
At least that is what a study by Falk and Kosfeld (2006) found. The research question they tested was if the principal can set a minimum level of x, should they? An economist would say, of course. The agent has an incentive to not work at all. Setting a minimum level of work would guarantee a…
Does marriage cause men’s wages to rise? This is the question addressed by UCSD professor Kate Antonovics and Robert Town in their 2004 paper in AER cleverly titled “Are all the good men married?” It has been shown that married men earn more money than non-married men with similar characteristics. Why is this? A few…
A recent JHE article by Park and Kang wonder if more education induces people to have a healthier lifestyle. They use data on Korean men to see if this is the case. They find that “an increase in education induces individuals to exercise regularly, and to get regular health checkups…[but]…education has little effect on smoking…