Hospital uncompensated care and patient experience: An instrumental variable approach.

Objective: Examine the endogenous relationship between uncompensated care and hospital patient experience scores.

Data Sources/study Setting: The Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems Survey, CMS Healthcare Cost Report Information System, and the US Census Bureau.

Study Design: The exogenous change in uncompensated care caused by the 2014 Medicaid expansion was exploited to measure the effect of uncompensated care on patient experience scores using a 2SLS regression with instrumental variables approach.

The Impact of Medicare Part D on Self-Employment.

We explore the relationship between access to affordable health insurance and self-employment using exogenous variation from the introduction of Medicare Part D that reduced the out-of-pocket cost of prescription drugs and improved health outcomes in a difference-in-differences model using the American Community Survey. We find that our treatment group of individuals aged 65-69 were 0.5 percentage points (or 5%) more likely to be self-employed in relation to a control group aged 60-64.

The Effects of Medicare Part D on Health Outcomes of Newly Covered Medicare Beneficiaries.

Objectives: To estimate the impact of Medicare Part D on cost-related prescription nonadherence and health outcomes among the newly covered medicare beneficiaries.

Method: Difference-in-differences analyses of data from a balanced panel of Medicare beneficiaries observed in each wave of the Health and Retirement Study from 2000 to 2010 were carried out. The differences in the pre- and post-Part D changes in these outcomes are calculated for previously uncovered Part D enrollees and a comparison group of previously covered Medicare beneficiaries.