Health & Healthcare in America: From Economics to Policy

June 22 - 25, 2014

Understanding Hospital Pricing

The papers in this session focus on understanding the correlates and determinants of hospital prices. We use reduced form empirical strategies to explore whether higher prices are associated with hospital-specific characteristics, such as higher quality and ownership status, as well as with market and competitive forces. Our results help explain the wide variation in prices across hospitals. Given the recent findings about the contribution of prices in the growth of medical spending in the US, we believe our findings are of use to economists and others who help shape healthcare policy.