The Doctor Might See You Now: The Supply Side Effects of Public Health Insurance Expansions

Craig L. Garthwaite

NBER Working Paper No. 17070
Issued in May 2011
NBER Program(s):Children, Health Care, Health Economics, Public Economics

In the United States, public health insurance programs cover over 90 million individuals. Changes in the scope of these programs, such as the Medicaid expansions under the recently passed Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, may have large effects on physician behavior. This study finds that following the implementation of the State Children's Health Insurance Program, physicians decreased the number of hours spent with patients, but increased their participation in the expanded program. Suggestive evidence is found that this decrease in hours was a result of shorter office visits. These findings are consistent with the predictions from a mixed-economy model of physician behavior with public and private payers and also provide evidence of crowd out resulting from the creation of SCHIP.

A non-technical summary of this paper is available in the October 2011 NBER Digest.  You can sign up to receive the NBER Digest by email.

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Document Object Identifier (DOI): 10.3386/w17070

Published: Garthwaite, Craig. 2012. The Doctor Might See You Now: The Supply Side of Public Health Insurance Expansions. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy. 4(3): 190-217.

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