New Findings in Medicare Described from NBER (Do health insurers innovate? Evidence from the anatomy of physician payments)

By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Weekly News -- Fresh data on Medicare and Medicaid - Medicare are presented in a new report. According to news originating from Cambridge, Massachusetts, by VerticalNews correspondents, research stated, "One of private health insurers' main roles in the United States is to negotiate physician payment rates on their beneficiaries' behalf. We show that these rates are often set in reference to a government benchmark, and ask how often private insurers customize their fee schedules away from this default."

Our news journalists obtained a quote from the research from NBER, "We exploit changes in Medicare's payments and dramatic bunching in markups over Medicare's rates to address this question. Although Medicare's rates are influential, 25 percent of physician services in our data, representing 45 percent of covered spending, deviate from the benchmark."

According to the news editors, the research concluded: "Heterogeneity in the pervasiveness and direction of deviations suggests that the private market coordinates around Medicare's pricing for simplicity but abandons it when sufficient value is at stake."

For more information on this research see: Do health insurers innovate? Evidence from the anatomy of physician payments. Journal of Health Economics, 2017;55():153-167. Journal of Health Economics can be contacted at: Elsevier Science Bv, PO Box 211, 1000 Ae Amsterdam, Netherlands. (Elsevier - www.elsevier.com; Journal of Health Economics - www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-health-economics/)

The news correspondents report that additional information may be obtained from J. Clemens, NBER, Cambridge, MA 02138, United States. Additional authors for this research include J.D. Gottlieb and T.L. Molnar.

The direct object identifier (DOI) for that additional information is: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhealeco.2017.07.001. This DOI is a link to an online electronic document that is either free or for purchase, and can be your direct source for a journal article and its citation.

Keywords for this news article include: Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, North and Central America, Medicare and Medicaid, Health Policy, NBER.

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