TY  - JOUR
AU  - Cutler, David M
AU  - Sheiner, Louise
TI  - Managed Care and the Growth of Medical Expenditures
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 6140
PY  - 1997
Y2  - August 1997
DO  - 10.3386/w6140
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w6140
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w6140.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
David M. Cutler
Department of Economics
Harvard University
1875 Cambridge Street
Cambridge, MA  02138
Tel: 617/496-5216
Fax: 617/496-8951
E-Mail: dcutler@harvard.edu

Louise Sheiner
Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue  N.W.
Washington, DC 20036
E-Mail: lsheiner@brookings.edu
M1  - published as David M. Cutler, Louise Sheiner. "Managed Care and the Growth of Medical Expenditures," in Alan M. Garber, editor, "Frontiers in Health Policy Research, Volume 1" MIT Press (1998)

M2  - featured in NBER digest on 1998-05-01
AB  - We use data across states to examine the relation between HMO enrollment and medical spending.  We find that increased managed care enrollment significantly reduces hospital cost growth.  While some of this effect is offset by increased spending on physicians, we generally find a significant reduction in total spending as well.  In analyzing the sources of hospital cost reductions, we find preliminary evidence that managed care has reduced the diffusion of medical technologies.  States with high managed care enrollment were technology leaders in the early 1980s; by the early 1990s those states were only average in their acquisition of new technologies.  This finding suggests managed care may have a significant effect on the long-run growth of medical spending.
ER  -