Regulated Revenues and Hospital Behavior: Evidence from a Medicare Overhaul
研究了2008年医疗保险支付改革如何影响医院行为，发现支付率提高的医院增加了收治的医保患者数量，弹性为1.2，同时增加了护士雇佣并缩短了住院时间。
Abstract We study a 2008 policy reform in which Medicare revised its hospital payment system to better reflect patients’ severity of illness. We construct a simulated instrument that predicts a hospital’s policy-induced change in reimbursement using pre-reform patients and postreform rules. The reform led to large persistent changes in Medicare payment rates across hospitals. Hospitals that faced larger gains in Medicare reimbursement increased the volume of Medicare patients they treated. The estimates imply a volume elasticity of 1.2. To accommodate greater volume, hospitals increased nurse employment, but also lowered length of stay.