 MEDICAID EXPANSION: The ACA expanded Medicaid to all adults and children living at 138% of the Federal Poverty Level. Crucially, people with behavioral health conditions make up 28% of that population. In states that chose to expand Medicaid, millions of people with behavioral health conditions gained access to health insurance, including coverage of mental health and substance use disorder s...

NORMA DAVIS: Good morning. Our first speaker this morning is Dr. Paul Billings who is currently at the California Pacific Medical Center, San Francisco.* He studied at Harvard, getting his M.D. and Ph.D degrees there and then went on to the University of Washington where he trained in internal medicine and medical genetics. Following that, he did a post-doctoral fellowship at David Farber Insti...

This paper uses metropolitan data to test empirically if health insurers possess monopsony or monopoly-busting power on the buyer-side of the hospital services market. According to theory, monopsony power is indicated by a fall in output, whereas, monopoly-busting power is shown by an increase in output when buyer concentration rises. The empirical results provide evidence that greater health i...

Health insurance companies regularly exclude certain hospitals from the network of hospitals their enrollees may visit. Many healthcare insiders argue that one reason insurance companies exclude hospitals is because exclusion provides leverage in contract negotiations with hospitals. This paper formalizes and explores the implications of that story. Data from the Affordable Care Act exchanges i...