This article uses a principal agent framework to examine the role that monitoring costs faced by an insurer have on health care utilization. We compare hospital lengths of stay for fee-for-service and capitated patients in low and high monitoring cost situations. Monitoring costs associated with a particular procedure are assumed to be high when there is large variation across patients in hospital lengths of stay. The empirical results indicate that differences in utilization between fee-for-service and capitated patients increase as monitoring costs increase. However, we do not find that fee-for-service reimbursement is used less in the difficult to monitor situations. (JEL I1) Copyright 2006, Oxford University Press.
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Article provided by Oxford University Press in its journal Economic Inquiry.
Volume (Year): 44 (2006) Issue (Month): 3 (July) Pages: 429-441 Download reference. The following formats are available: HTML
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