Table 5.
Medical Costs, Health, and Noneconomic Damage Awards: Causality Tests of the Instrument.
| Timing of noneconomic award
variable |
|||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Moving average of leading
values |
Current Year (t) | Moving average of lagged
values |
|||||||
| t+4, t+5, t+6 | t+3, t+4, t+5 | t+2, t+3, t+4 | t+1, t+2, t+3 | t-1, t-2, t-3 | t-2, t-3, t-4 | t-3, t-4, t-5 | t-4, t-5, t-6 | ||
|
Hospital Cost
Estimates
| |||||||||
| Dependent Variable: Hospital Facility Expenditures Per Bed | |||||||||
| Noneconomic Award (Hundreds of Thousands) | -183.970 (365.466) | 643.497 (555.175) | 768.325* (424.522) | 309.522 (439.570) | 83.116 (157.477) | 1,198.059*** (432.643) | 2,393.893*** (554.984) | 2,486.269*** (505.182) | 943.709 (654.647) |
| Dependent Variable: Hospital Facility Expenditures Per Bed Day | |||||||||
| Noneconomic Award (Hundreds of Thousands) | -0.119 (1.163) | 0.571 (0.950) | 0.738 (1.084) | -0.346 (0.783) | 0.059 (0.433) | 1.161 (1.084) | 5.242*** (1.403) | 4.661*** (1.297) | 2.191 (1.438) |
|
| |||||||||
|
County Medicare
Estimates
| |||||||||
| Dependent Variable: Medicare Part A Expenditures Per Enrollee | |||||||||
| Noneconomic Award (Hundreds of Thousands) | 2.778 (4.767) | 0.821 (4.811) | 4.774 (5.283) | 6.143 (7.370) | 1.578 (2.050) | 21.940** (8.786) | 31.916*** (11.537) | 24.734** (10.853) | 24.308* (12.920) |
| Dependent Variable: Medicare Part B Expenditures Per Enrollee | |||||||||
| Noneconomic Award (Hundreds of Thousands) | 1.063 (1.985) | 1.559 (2.539) | 2.471 (2.586) | 3.144 (2.968) | 1.492 (1.178) | 10.320** (4.143) | 7.789* (4.572) | 5.117 (4.851) | 5.195 (5.317) |
|
| |||||||||
|
Hospital Utilization
Estimates
| |||||||||
| Dependent Variable: Hospital Days Per Bed | |||||||||
| Noneconomic Award (Hundreds of Thousands) | -1.332 (2.250) | 0.024 (3.069) | 1.779 (2.233) | 0.232 (1.427) | -0.300 (0.559) | 0.188 (1.857) | -4.290 (3.501) | -4.026 (2.694) | -3.932 (2.472) |
|
| |||||||||
|
Mortality
Estimates
| |||||||||
| Dependent Variable: Total Deaths Per 1,000 Population | |||||||||
| Noneconomic Award (Hundreds of Thousands) | -0.021 (0.015) | -0.017 (0.017) | -0.015 (0.016) | -0.015 (0.014) | -0.004 (0.003) | -0.019* (0.010) | -0.014** (0.007) | -0.012* (0.007) | -0.006 (0.005) |
| Dependent Variable: Deaths Per 1,000 Age 20 to 64 | |||||||||
| Noneconomic Award (Hundreds of Thousands) | -0.013 (0.010) | -0.011 (0.010) | -0.011 (0.010) | -0.011 (0.009) | -0.003 (0.002) | -0.015** (0.006) | -0.011** (0.004) | -0.009 (0.007) | -0.007 (0.007) |
| Dependent Variable: Deaths Per 1,000 Age 65 and up | |||||||||
| Noneconomic Award (Hundreds of Thousands) | -0.091 (0.065) | -0.060 (0.074) | -0.043 (0.066) | -0.038 (0.054) | -0.015 (0.014) | -0.064 (0.043) | -0.060* (0.033) | -0.049* (0.027) | -0.010 (0.025) |
Note: Table shows the reduced-form estimates of average noneconomic damage awards on hospital and Medicare expenditures and on county mortality rates. Each coefficient is from a separate regression, with each column representing a different lag or lead for the noneconomic damages. The unit of analysis for the top panel is a hospital-year, while for the bottom panel it is a county-year. County population is used as a weight in all regressions. Other explanatory variables include hospital or county fixed-effects, year fixed-effects, as well as a quadratic for personal income per capita, the percent of the population that is male, white, African American, of Hispanic ethnicity, and that falls into 5-year age ranges. Robust standard errors allowing clustering at the county level are reported in parentheses. A *, **, or *** represents statistical significance at the 10, 5, or 1% level, respectively.