IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/aejapp/v10y2018i1p1-39.html

Hospitals as Insurers of Last Resort

Author

Listed:
  • Craig Garthwaite
  • Tal Gross
  • Matthew J. Notowidigdo

Abstract

American hospitals are required to provide emergency medical care to the uninsured. We use previously confidential hospital financial data to study the resulting uncompensated care, medical care for which no payment is received. Using both panel-data methods and case studies, we find that each additional uninsured person costs hospitals approximately $800 each year. Increases in the uninsured population also lower hospital profit margins, suggesting that hospitals do not pass along all uncompensated-care costs to other parties such as hospital employees or privately insured patients. A hospital's uncompensated-care costs also increase when a neighboring hospital closes.

Suggested Citation

  • Craig Garthwaite & Tal Gross & Matthew J. Notowidigdo, 2018. "Hospitals as Insurers of Last Resort," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 10(1), pages 1-39, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:aejapp:v:10:y:2018:i:1:p:1-39
    Note: DOI: 10.1257/app.20150581
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/app.20150581
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/content/file?id=6020
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/attachments?retrieve=n74K9Mz59_V8qNic2t1joQVRq918vQVE
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/attachments?retrieve=cqyTLrTAnQYdUYtNeP96S02BYJIj-bBx
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • G22 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Insurance; Insurance Companies; Actuarial Studies
    • I11 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Analysis of Health Care Markets
    • I13 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health Insurance, Public and Private
    • L25 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Firm Performance

    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:aejapp:v:10:y:2018:i:1:p:1-39. 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.