Reports on Insurance from Lehigh University Provide New Insights (Insurer Size and Negotiated Hospital Prices: Insights From the Affordable Care Act in Arkansas): Insurance

2025 OCT 13 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at NewsRx Policy and Law Daily -- Investigators discuss new findings in Insurance. According to news reporting out of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, by NewsRx editors, the research stated, “This paper examines the role of insurer size in price negotiations between commercial health insurers and hospitals in the United States. The empirical analysis focuses on a dominant insurer in the Arkansas individual health insurance market that experienced a size increase due to a policy change.”

Our news journalists obtained a quote from the research from Lehigh University, “Under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), Arkansas expanded its Medicaid program, but unlike other expansion states, it used individual plans-a private insurance option generally not designed for Medicaid-to provide coverage to newly insured beneficiaries. This unique policy nearly doubled the insurer’s individual plan enrollment after the ACA was implemented. Admission-level regression analysis reveals that the insurer’s hospital inpatient prices for individual plans decreased by 16.7% following the expansion.”

According to the news editors, the research concluded: “Consistent with the predictions from bargaining models, the findings suggest that the insurer’s increased bargaining leverage due to its larger size is the primary mechanism behind the price reduction.”

This research has been peer-reviewed.

For more information on this research see: Insurer Size and Negotiated Hospital Prices: Insights From the Affordable Care Act in Arkansas. Health Economics, 2025;34(11):2097-2113. Health Economics can be contacted at: Wiley, 111 River St, Hoboken 07030-5774, NJ, USA. (Wiley-Blackwell - http://www.wiley.com/; Health Economics - http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)1099-1050)

Our news journalists report that additional information may be obtained by contacting Jee-Hun Choi, Economics Department, College of Business, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, United States.

The direct object identifier (DOI) for that additional information is: https://doi.org/10.1002/hec.70022. 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.

Publisher contact information for the journal Health Economics is: Wiley, 111 River St, Hoboken 07030-5774, NJ, USA.

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