TY  - JOUR
AU  - Grabowski,David C.
AU  - Gruber,Jonathan
AU  - Angelelli,Joseph J.
TI  - Nursing Home Quality as a Public Good
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 12361
PY  - 2006
Y2  - July 2006
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w12361
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w12361.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
David Grabowski
Harvard University
Department of Health Care Policy
Harvard Medical School
180 Longwood Avenue
Boston, MA 02115
E-Mail: grabowski@med.harvard.edu

Jonathan Gruber
MIT Department of Economics
E52-355
50 Memorial Drive
Cambridge, MA 02142-1347
Tel: 617/253-8892
Fax: 617/253-1330
E-Mail: gruberj@mit.edu
M2  - featured in NBER digest on 2006-07-17
AB  - There has been much debate among economists about whether nursing home quality is a public good across Medicaid and private-pay patients within a common facility. However, there has been only limited empirical work addressing this issue. Using a unique individual level panel of residents of nursing homes from seven states, we exploit both within-facility and within-patient variation in payer source and quality to examine this issue. We also test the robustness of these results across states with different Medicaid and private-pay rate differentials. Across our various identification strategies, the results generally support the idea that quality is a public good within nursing homes. That is, within a common nursing home, there is very little evidence to suggest that Medicaid-funded residents receive consistently lower quality care relative to their private-paying counterparts.
ER  -