IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/30719.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Adverse Selection and Network Design Under Regulated Plan Prices: Evidence from Medicaid

Author

Listed:
  • Amanda R. Kreider
  • Timothy J. Layton
  • Mark Shepard
  • Jacob Wallace

Abstract

Health plans for the poor increasingly limit access to specialty hospitals. We investigate the role of adverse selection in generating this equilibrium among private plans in Medicaid. Studying a network change, we find that covering a top cancer hospital causes severe adverse selection, increasing demand for a plan by 50% among enrollees with cancer versus no impact for others. Medicaid’s fixed insurer payments make offsetting this selection, and the contract distortions it induces, challenging, requiring either infeasibly high payment rates or near-perfect risk adjustment. By contrast, a small explicit bonus for covering the hospital is sufficient to make coverage profitable.

Suggested Citation

  • Amanda R. Kreider & Timothy J. Layton & Mark Shepard & Jacob Wallace, 2022. "Adverse Selection and Network Design Under Regulated Plan Prices: Evidence from Medicaid," NBER Working Papers 30719, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:30719
    Note: EH IO PE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w30719.pdf
    Download Restriction: 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.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Michael Geruso & Timothy Layton & Daniel Prinz, 2019. "Screening in Contract Design: Evidence from the ACA Health Insurance Exchanges," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 11(2), pages 64-107, May.
    2. Kurt Lavetti & Kosali Simon, 2018. "Strategic Formulary Design in Medicare Part D Plans," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 10(3), pages 154-192, August.
    3. Nicholas Tilipman, 2022. "Employer Incentives and Distortions in Health Insurance Design: Implications for Welfare and Costs," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 112(3), pages 998-1037, March.
    4. Michael Geruso & Timothy J. Layton, 2017. "Selection in Health Insurance Markets and Its Policy Remedies," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 31(4), pages 23-50, Fall.
    5. Colleen Carey, 2017. "Technological Change and Risk Adjustment: Benefit Design Incentives in Medicare Part D," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 9(1), pages 38-73, February.
    6. Ilyana Kuziemko & Katherine Meckel & Maya Rossin-Slater, 2018. "Does Managed Care Widen Infant Health Disparities? Evidence from Texas Medicaid," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 10(3), pages 255-283, August.
    7. David M. Cutler & Sarah J. Reber, 1998. "Paying for Health Insurance: The Trade-Off between Competition and Adverse Selection," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 113(2), pages 433-466.
    8. Timothy Layton & Alice K. Ndikumana & Mark Shepard, 2017. "Health Plan Payment in Medicaid Managed Care: A Hybrid Model of Regulated Competition," NBER Working Papers 23518, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Michael Geruso & Timothy J. Layton & Grace McCormack & Mark Shepard, 2023. "The Two-Margin Problem in Insurance Markets," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 105(2), pages 237-257, March.
    2. Jonathan Gruber, 2017. "Delivering Public Health Insurance through Private Plan Choice in the United States," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 31(4), pages 3-22, Fall.
    3. Martin Gaynor & Kate Ho & Robert J. Town, 2015. "The Industrial Organization of Health-Care Markets," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 53(2), pages 235-284, June.
    4. Bijlsma, Michiel & Boone, Jan & Zwart, Gijsbert, 2017. "The complementarity between risk adjustment and community rating: Distorting market outcomes to facilitate redistribution," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 155(C), pages 21-37.
    5. Michele Fioretti & Hongming Wang, 2020. "Performance Pay in Insurance Markets: Evidence from Medicare," Working Papers 2020.03, International Network for Economic Research - INFER.
    6. David Dranove & Christopher Ody & Amanda Starc, 2021. "A Dose of Managed Care: Controlling Drug Spending in Medicaid," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 13(1), pages 170-197, January.
    7. Bergquist, Savannah L. & Layton, Timothy J. & McGuire, Thomas G. & Rose, Sherri, 2019. "Data transformations to improve the performance of health plan payment methods," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 195-207.
    8. Benjamin R. Handel & Jonathan T. Kolstad, 2021. "The Affordable Care Act After a Decade: Industrial Organization of the Insurance Exchanges," NBER Working Papers 29178, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Peter Paul Klein & Richard van Kleef & Josefa Henriquez & Francesco Paolucci, 2023. "The interplay between risk adjustment and risk rating in voluntary health insurance," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 90(1), pages 59-91, March.
    10. Michele Fioretti & Hongming Wang, 2019. "Subsidizing Inequality: Performance Pay and Risk Selection in Medicare," SciencePo Working papers Main hal-03393070, HAL.
    11. Jeffrey P. Clemens & Jonathan M. Leganza & Alex Masucci, 2021. "Plugging Gaps in Payment Systems: Evidence from the Take-Up of New Medicare Billing Codes," CESifo Working Paper Series 9209, CESifo.
    12. Michael Geruso & Timothy J. Layton, 2017. "Selection in Health Insurance Markets and Its Policy Remedies," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 31(4), pages 23-50, Fall.
    13. Fleitas, Sebastian & Gowrisankaran, Gautam & Lo Sasso, Anthony, 2022. "Incumbent regulation and adverse selection: You can keep your health plan, but at what cost?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 205(C).
    14. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/4bg68glinb8r8roh0akvprtu9u is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Savannah L. Bergquist & Timothy J. Layton & Thomas G. McGuire & Sherri Rose, 2018. "Intervening on the Data to Improve the Performance of Health Plan Payment Methods," NBER Working Papers 24491, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Lieber, Ethan M.J., 2018. "Does health insurance coverage fall when nonprofit insurers become for-profits?," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 75-88.
    17. repec:hal:wpspec:info:hdl:2441/4bg68glinb8r8roh0akvprtu9u is not listed on IDEAS
    18. Keith M. Marzilli Ericson & Kimberley H. Geissler & Benjamin Lubin, 2018. "The Impact of Partial-Year Enrollment on the Accuracy of Risk-Adjustment Systems: A Framework and Evidence," American Journal of Health Economics, MIT Press, vol. 4(4), pages 454-478, Fall.
    19. A. A. Withagen-Koster & R. C. Kleef & F. Eijkenaar, 2020. "Incorporating self-reported health measures in risk equalization through constrained regression," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 21(4), pages 513-528, June.
    20. Richard C. van Kleef & René C. J. A. van Vliet, 2022. "How to deal with persistently low/high spenders in health plan payment systems?," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 31(5), pages 784-805, May.
    21. repec:hal:wpspec:info:hdl:2441/2ioennpq5m90holakkatq7cmms is not listed on IDEAS
    22. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/2ioennpq5m90holakkatq7cmms is not listed on IDEAS
    23. Layton, Timothy J. & McGuire, Thomas G. & van Kleef, Richard C., 2018. "Deriving risk adjustment payment weights to maximize efficiency of health insurance markets," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 93-110.
    24. Minke Remmerswaal & Jan Boone & Rudy Douven, 2019. "Selection and moral hazard effects in healthcare," CPB Discussion Paper 393.rdf, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • H51 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Government Expenditures and Health
    • I11 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Analysis of Health Care Markets
    • I13 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health Insurance, Public and Private

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:30719. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.