IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/aecrev/v115y2025i1p263-94.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Dying or Lying? For-Profit Hospices and End-of-Life Care

Author

Listed:
  • Jonathan Gruber
  • David H. Howard
  • Jetson Leder-Luis
  • Theodore L. Caputi

Abstract

The Medicare hospice program is intended to provide palliative care to terminal patients, but patients with long stays in hospice are highly profitable, motivating concerns about overuse among the Alzheimer's and Dementia (ADRD) population in the rapidly growing for-profit sector. We provide the first causal estimates of the effect of for-profit hospice on patient spending using the entry of for-profit hospices over 20 years. We find hospice has saved money for Medicare by offsetting other expensive care among ADRD patients. As a result, policies limiting hospice use including revenue caps and antifraud lawsuits are distortionary and deter potentially cost-saving admissions.

Suggested Citation

  • Jonathan Gruber & David H. Howard & Jetson Leder-Luis & Theodore L. Caputi, 2025. "Dying or Lying? For-Profit Hospices and End-of-Life Care," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 115(1), pages 263-294, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:115:y:2025:i:1:p:263-94
    DOI: 10.1257/aer.20230328
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/aer.20230328
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://doi.org/10.3886/E209323V1
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/aer.20230328.appx
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/aer.20230328.ds
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1257/aer.20230328?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    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
    • I12 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health Behavior
    • I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health
    • J14 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of the Elderly; Economics of the Handicapped; Non-Labor Market Discrimination
    • L84 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Personal, Professional, and Business Services

    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:aea:aecrev:v:115:y:2025:i:1:p:263-94. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.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.