Results

Journal article

American Economic Review:

Is there too little antitrust enforcement in the US hospital sector?

From 2002 to 2020, there were over 1,000 mergers of U.S. hospitals. During this period, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) took enforcement actions against 13 transactions. However, using the FTC?s standard screening too...Read more...

Journal article

The Quarterly Journal of Economics:

The price ain't right? hospital prices and health spending on the privately insured

We use insurance claims data covering 28% of individuals with employersponsored health insurance in the United States to study the variation in health spending on the privately insured, examine the structure of insurer-h...Read more...

Journal article

Health Affairs:

Hospital prices grew substantially faster than physician prices for hospital-based care in 2007-14

Evidence suggests that growth in providers' prices drives growth in health care spending on the privately insured. However, existing work has not systematically differentiated between the growth rate of hospital prices a...Read more...

Journal article

Health Affairs:

Variation in health spending growth for the privately insured from 2007 to 2014

We examined the growth in health spending on people with employer-sponsored private insurance in the period 2007-14. Our analysis relied on information from the Health Care Cost Institute data set, which includes insuran...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Public Economics:

Does competition from private surgical centres improve public hospitals? performance? Evidence from the English National Health Service

This paper examines the impact of a government programme which facilitated the entry of for-profit surgical centres to compete against incumbent National Health Service hospitals in England. We examine the impact of comp...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Surprise! Out-of-network billing for emergency care in the United States

Using insurance claims data capturing 8.9 million emergency episodes, we show that in 22% of cases, patients attended in-network hospitals, but were treated by out-of-network physicians. We find that out-of-network billi...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Politics, hospital behaviour and health care spending

This paper examines the link between legislative politics, hospital behaviour, and health care spending. When trying to pass sweeping legislation, congressional leaders can attract votes by adding targeted provisions tha...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Does competition from private surgical centres improve public hospitals' performance? Evidence from the English National Health Service

This paper examines the impact of competition from government-facilitated entry of private, specialty surgical centres on the efficiency and case mix of incumbent public hospitals within the English NHS. We exploit the f...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The price ain't right? Hospital prices and health spending on the privately insured

We use insurance claims data covering 28 percent of individuals with employer-sponsored health insurance in the US to study the variation in health spending on the privately insured, examine the structure of insurer-hosp...Read more...

CEP US election analysis

Healthcare Reform: The US Policy Debate

The ability of the next US president to rein in spending on healthcare and improve the productivity of the healthcare system is largely going to determine the country?s fiscal future. That is one of the conclusions of th...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Does Competition Improve Public Hospitals' Efficiency? Evidence from a Quasi-Experiment in the English National Health Service

This paper uses a difference-in-difference style estimation strategy to test separately the impact of competition from public sector and private sector hospitals on the efficiency of public hospitals. Our identification ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief... Competition in the public sector: good for the goose, good for the gander?

Zack Cooper outlines evidence on the benefits of competition in healthcare - and the implications for the coalition government's NHS reform plans....Read more...

CentrePiece article

The NHS White Paper: evolution or revolution?

Zack Cooper assesses the coalition government's plans for healthcare reform...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

Hospital competition is good for patients, and for efficiency

The coalition government has taken great pains to assure the public that the NHS budget will be `ring-fenced?, and thus not subject to the cuts of 20 to 40 per cent forecast for other Whitehall departments. At the same t...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Does Hospital Competition Improve Efficiency? An Analysis of the Recent Market-Based Reforms to the English NHS

This paper uses a difference-in-difference estimator to test whether the introduction of patient choice and hospital competition in the English NHS in January 2006 has prompted hospitals to become more efficient. Efficie...Read more...

CEP election analysis

Health: Higher Spending has Improved Quality, But Productivity Must Increase

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SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Does Hospital Competition Save Lives? Evidence from the English NHS Patient Choice Reforms

This paper examines whether or not hospital competition in a market with fixed reimbursement prices can prompt improvements in clinical quality. In January 2006, the British Government introduced a major extension of the...Read more...