ABSTRACT
Does tort reform reduce defensive medicine and thus healthcare spending? Several (though not all) prior studies, using a difference-in-differences (DiD) approach, find lower Medicare spending for hospital care after states adopt caps on non-economic or total damages ("damage caps"), during the "second" reform wave of the mid-1980s. We re-examine this issue in several ways. We study the nine states that adopted caps during the "third reform wave," from 2002 to 2005. We find that damage caps have no significant impact on Medicare Part A spending, but predict roughly 4% higher Medicare Part B spending. We then revisit the 1980s caps, and find no evidence of a post-adoption drop (or rise) in spending for these caps.
Subject(s)
Defensive Medicine/economics , Liability, Legal , Malpractice/legislation & jurisprudence , Defensive Medicine/organization & administration , Health Expenditures/statistics & numerical data , Humans , Liability, Legal/economics , Malpractice/economics , Medicare Part A/economics , Medicare Part A/statistics & numerical data , Medicare Part B/economics , Medicare Part B/statistics & numerical data , United StatesABSTRACT
Since antiquity, people in several East Asian countries, such as China, Japan, and South Korea, have believed that a person is destined to possess specific characteristics according to the sign of the zodiac under which he or she was born. South Koreans, in particular, have traditionally considered that the year of the Horse bears inauspicious implications for the birth of daughters. Using monthly longitudinal data at the region level in South Korea between 1970 and 2003, we found that in the year of the Horse, the sex ratio at birth significantly increased while fertility decreased.
