Presentations: 2024 ASSA-HERO (scheduled); 2022 UGA Econ Student Seminar, UGA Health Brownbag Workshop
Slides PDF Abstract: The Women, Infants, and Children nutritional program (WIC) serves as an intermediary in the infant formula market, providing vouchers to its participants-- low-income mothers and their infants-- allowing them to obtain specific brands of infant formula for free. To determine these brands, each state's WIC agency exclusively contracts with a single manufacturer in exchange for rebates and an agreement to abide by pricing regulations. I quantify the impact of this purchasing program on consumer surplus and government expenditures, and explore an alternative approach of subsidizing WIC participants by giving them a discount on any brand. I do this by estimating a demand model where preferences and prices paid vary across WIC and non-WIC participants, and a supply model where the contract manufacturer faces price regulations. I find that removing the WIC program, in a lassize-faire counterfactual, raises prices. This is because price regulation forces the contract manufacturer to set a lower price which strengths competition. Though the current WIC purchasing process yields higher aggregate consumer surplus than an alternative discount coupon policy, it increases the WIC program's expenditures and reducing total welfare of the market.Presentations: 2023 CES Annual Conference (online); 2023 Midwest Economic Association Conference
Slides PDF Abstract: The Women, Infants, and Children nutritional Program (WIC) grants exclusive contracts to infant formula manufacturers, who provide rebates that lower the cost to recipients. However, these exclusive contracts may create considerable market power for formula manufacturers and spillovers to non-WIC formula buyers. This paper tries to answer three questions: First, what happens if a manufacturer wins a WIC competitive bidding contract in the infant formula market in terms of market shares and prices? Second, is there any spillover effect? Lastly, why is there spillover? Our results show that when the WIC contract changes hands, the previous contract winners' market share declines by 50% within one month, but the new winner's market shares increase by around 50% on average. Much of this change comes from households who are not eligible for WIC, suggesting a large spillover effect. To explain it, we test whether households who are not eligible for WIC buy contract winners' formula because there is no other option in their choice sets or because the winners' formula is cheaper than others. The finding suggests that both price and shelf space hypotheses play small roles in explaining the spillover. Hence, on the extensive margin, food programs do not limit non-beneficiaries choice sets in grocery stores.Presentations: 2022 UGA Health Brownbag Workshop
Abstract: The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) reported in 2017 that a significant portion of the $3.5 trillion spent on U.S. healthcare went to categories, including hospital care, physician and clinical services, prescription drugs, and more. Physicians (MDs and DOs) and healthcare professionals largely determine these services. This makes their Health Insurance Literacy (HIL) a key factor in analyzing how to reduce wasted expenditure. In this paper, we assess physicians' HIL by conducting surveys at a local medical school in Georgia to gauge physicians' knowledge and the reliability of their information sources, and then correlate this data with their evaluations from insurance companies. Evaluating whether physicians and healthcare providers comprehend the insurance system they work within is essential. However, limited research exists on physician Health Insurance Literacy (HIL), with more emphasis placed on patient HIL. Therefore, this survey is designed to assess physicians' understanding of medical insurance, prescription practices, referral efficiency, navigating prior authorizations, coding, reimbursement, and contracting with health plans. The broader questions we aim to answer in the long run are whether an optimal level of physician HIL can reduce reimbursement waste and whether increasing physician HIL can lower administrative costs for medical practices.Presentations: 2021 UGA Econ Student Seminar
PDF Abstract: In 2016, there was a major Chinese health insurance reform that integrated non-working urban residents' and rural residents' health insurance plans, which were treated differently before the reform, aiming to provide a lower co-insurance rate. This paper estimates the impact of this integration of health insurance plans on the Chinese elder's health care utilization and medical spending. Three different identification strategies are adopted: probit model, DD with continuous treatment, and DD with different treatment timings. The reform significantly increased the elder inpatient health care utilization by 16% ~ 37% but had no significant effect on outpatient health care utilization. This is caused by the reimbursement process in the public health insurance system and the cheap medical services for outpatients in China. I also find no significant changes in out-of-pocket medical spending after the reform or narrowed rural-urban disparity in healthcare utilization.