Abstract
Evidence of increased health care utilization associated with the Medicaid expansion suggests that clinicians increased capacity to meet demand. However, little is known about the mechanism underlying this response. Using a novel source of all-payer data, we quantified clinicians’ response to the Medicaid expansion – examining whether and how they changed their Medicaid participation decisions, payer mix, and overall labor supply. Primary care clinicians in expansion states provided an average of 49 additional appointments per year (a 21% relative increase) for patients insured by Medicaid, compared to clinicians in non-expansion states - with new-patient visits representing half (25 appointments) of this overall increase. Clinicians did not increase their labor supply to accommodate these additional appointments. They instead offset the 1.7 percentage point average increase in Medicaid payer mix with an equivalent reduction in commercial payer mix. However, this reduction in commercial patient share represented only a 2.8% relative decrease, with commercially insured patients still comprising the majority of the average clinician's patient panel. Subsample analyses revealed a larger increase in care for Medicaid patients among clinicians with high Medicaid participation preceding the eligibility expansion.
Original language | English (US) |
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Article number | 102541 |
Journal | Journal of Health Economics |
Volume | 80 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Dec 2021 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This research was funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (grant number 41978 ), a grant-in-aid from the University of Minnesota Office of the Vice President for Research, and a dissertation grant from the Agency for Healthcare Quality and Research (grant number R36 HS24455–01 ).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Elsevier B.V.
Keywords
- Labor supply
- Medicaid
- Payer mix
- Primary care