Optimal prices and costs for hospitals with excess bed capacity

Ennis, Sean ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6796-5788, Schoenbaum, Michael and Keeler, Theodore (2000) Optimal prices and costs for hospitals with excess bed capacity. Applied Economics, 32 (9). pp. 1201-1212. ISSN 0003-6846

Full text not available from this repository. (Request a copy)

Abstract

This paper analyses theoretically and empirically issues in optimal pricing with excess hospital capacity, and then applies the analysis to the issue as to whether Medicare and Medicaid payments cover the marginal costs of treating patients of each type. The primary innovation of this paper lies in incorporating appropriate theoretical measures of hospital excess capacity to a multiproduct empirical hospital cost function, and in showing how proper measures of marginal cost can be applied to the examples of Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement in California. With a standard translog specification that ignores hospital excess capacity, the estimated marginal costs of Medicare and Medicaid patients are higher than the reimbursement. However, correctly incorporating excess capacity into our model leads to considerably lower estimates of short-run marginal costs, suggesting that Medicare hospital reimbursement is more than adequate in the short run. We also develop a third marginal cost concept, that of what long-run marginal costs would be if excess capacity were eliminated. This is the most theoretically appropriate measure of optimum long-run reimbursement; Medicare reimbursement also covers this measure of costs. The extent to which Medicare reimbursement covers costs thus depends crucially on whether capacity is assumed fixed or variable. Similar examples are presented for Medicaid.

Item Type:	Article
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Norwich Business School
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Responsible Business Regulation Group Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Centres > Centre for Competition Policy
Depositing User:	LivePure Connector
Date Deposited:	22 Apr 2020 08:48
Last Modified:	21 Apr 2023 00:29
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/74790
DOI:	10.1080/000368400404344

Actions (login required)

View Item