Health care.

• Position: Bureau News

The NBER's Program on Health Care met in Cambridge on November 14. Laurence C. Baker and Jay Bhattacharya, NBER and Stanford University, organized this program:

Jill Horwitz, University of Michigan, "Does Corporate Form Matter? Service Provision in the Hospital Industry"

Mireille Jacobson, University of California, Irvine; Craig Earle, James O'Malley, Juliana Pakes, and Peter Gaccione, Harvard University; and Joseph P. Newhouse, NBER and Harvard University, "Does Reimbursement Influence Chemotherapy Treatment for Cancer Patients?"

Mark Stabile, NBER and University of Toronto; Adriana Lleras-Muney, NBER and Princeton University; and Anna Aizer, Brown University, "Can Differential Access to Care Explain Infant Health Gradients? Evidence from California? Disproportionate Share Program"

Amy Finkelstein, NBER and Harvard University, and Kathleen McGarry, NBER and University of California, Los Angeles, "Private Information and Its Effect on Market Equilibrium: New Evidence from Long Term Care Insurance" (NBER Working Paper No. 9957)

Jay Bhattacharya, and William B. Vogt, Carnegie Mellon University and NBER, "Employer Provision of Health Insurance and the Adverse Selection Problem"

Three types of firms--nonprofit, for-profit, and government--own acute care U.S. hospitals, yet we do not know whether different types of hospitals specialize in different medical services. Previous studies of hospital ownership primarily have considered financial behavior. They have produced mixed evidence, although many conclude that nonprofit and for-profit hospitals are similar. Horwitz studies the correlation between corporate ownership and the offering of over 30 medical services. She predicts the probability that hospital types offer relatively profitable and unprofitable services, and services for which profitability varies. Her dataset includes every U.S. urban, acute care hospital from 1988 to 2000. Horwitz concludes that hospital ownership is correlated with offering different types of medical services. For-profit hospitals are more likely than comparable government and nonprofit hospitals to offer relatively profitable medical services. Government hospitals are more likely than for-profit and nonprofit hospitals to offer relatively unprofitable services. Nonprofit hospitals often fall in the middle, offering more profitable services and fewer unprofitable services than do government hospitals. Further, for-profits are considerably more responsive to changes...