Medical care price indexes for patients with employer-provided insurance: nationally representative estimates from MarketScan Data.

ABSTRACT:

Objective

Commonly observed shifts in the utilization of medical care services to treat diseases may pose problems for official price indexes at the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) that do not account for service shifts. We examine how these shifts may lead to different price estimates than those observed in official price statistics at the BLS.

Data sources

We use a convenience sample of enrollees with employer-provided insurance from the MarketScan database for the years 2003 to 2007. Population weights that consider the age, sex, and geographic distribution of enrollees are assigned to construct representative estimates.

Study design

We compare two types of price indexes: (1) a Service Price Index (SPI) that is similar to the BLS index, which holds services fixed

SUBMITTER: Dunn A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3681249 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature