Maxim Pinkovsky on managed care

This result is not a shocker, but I have never seen the actual work done on this point:

The Impact of Managed Care Backlash on Health Care Costs
During the late 1990s, there was a substantial cultural, media and legal backlash against the cost-containment practices of managed care organizations (particularly, HMOs). Most states passed a variety of laws in this period that restricted the cost-cutting measures that managed care firms could use. I exploit panel variation in the passage of these regulations across states and over time to investigate the effects of the managed care backlash, as proxied by this legislation, on health care cost growth. I find that the backlash had a strong effect on health care costs, and can statistically explain much of the rise in health spending as a share of U.S. GDP between 1993 and 2005 (amounting to 1% – 1.5% of GDP). I also investigate the effects of the managed care backlash on intensity of care, hospital salaries and technology adoption. I conclude that managed care was largely successful in keeping health care costs on a sustainable path relative to the size of the economy.

The paper is here, and it is Maxim’s job market paper from MIT.  A number of his other papers, at the link, look interesting as well.

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