Working Paper

Physician Payments Under Health Care Reform

Abstract: This study assesses the impact of major health insurance reform in Massachusetts on the prices of services paid to physicians in the privately insured market. We estimate that the reform caused physician payments to increase at least 10.8 percentage points. This impact occurred while the legislation was materializing but before the final compromised version of the reform was enacted in April 2006. This finding is consistent with prices being set in a forward-looking manner, in anticipation of the reform. Overall, one-sixth of physician service price growth in Massachusetts between 2003 and 2010 was directly attributable to the insurance reform.

Keywords: Health care reform; ;

https://doi.org/10.24148/wp2013-36

Bibliographic Information

Provider: Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco

Part of Series: Working Paper Series

Publication Date: 2014-03-28

Number: 2013-36

Pages: 34 pages