Volume 35, Number 3 (Summer) 2000
Baker, Laurence and Anne Beeson Royalty. 2000. "Medicaid Policy, Physician Behavior, and Health Care for the Low-Income Population." Journal of Human Resources 35(3):480-502.
Responding to concerns about health of poor children and mothers, Medicaid eligibility for pregnant women was expanded during the 1980s and 1990s and Medicaid fees paid to physicians for prenatal care and delivery were increased. We examine physician responses to these policy changes using data on physician practices. We find that expanded eligibility for Medicaid did increase access to physician services. Contrary to some earlier findings, however, increases in access are only apparent for the physicians in "public" institutions such as public clinics and hospital clinics; we find no evidence that increases in eligibility increase access to private, office-based physicians.
Laurence C. Baker is an assistant professor of health research and policy at Stanford University and a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Anne Beeson Royalty is an assistant professor of economics at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis and an assistant professor of economics at Stanford University. The authors thank Jonathan Gruber, Janet Currie, Joel Cohen, and John Holahan for graciously providing data on Medicaid eligibility and fees; Sharmila Shankarkumar for her able research assistance; Jere Behrman, Randy Ellis, Jonathan Gruber, Sean Nicholson, Brigitte Madrian, John Pencavel, Julie Schaffner, two anonymous referees; and seminar participants at the 1997 Health Economics Conference at the University of Minnesota, the 1997 Society of Labor Economists meetings, the 1997 AEA meetings, the 1996 NBER Summer Institute, the Public Policy Institute of California's labor economic meetings, and Tulane University for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. The data used in this article can be obtained beginning March 2001 through February 2004 from Laurence Baker at the Department of Health Research and Policy, HRP Redwood Building, Rm 253, Stanford University, Stanford CA, 94305-5405.
© 2002 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
US ISSN 0022-166X