Experts Examine Effect of Cost-Shifting
on Hospitals and Physicians

Cost-shifting is said to occur when a health care provider raises its prices to private payers in response to administrative price changes by a public payer. For example, a hospital may raise prices to private payers in response to reductions in Medicare payment rates. What are the public policy implications of cost-shifting?

Leading experts will explore the cost-shifting dynamic among public and private payers and implications for hospitals and physicians at a meeting sponsored by The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Changes in Health Care Financing and Organization (HCFO) program November 13. Panelists will address what is known about the cost-shifting dynamic from economic theory and research, and how health care stakeholders manage the challenges of declining public payments.

A prominent panel of experts will discuss cost-shifting in the context of Medicare solvency, providers’ continued participation in the program, access problems for beneficiaries, and the return to double-digit health care inflation for commercial plans.

Who: Stuart Altman of Brandeis University, Robert Berenson of AcademyHealth, Nancy-Ann DeParle of JP Morgan, Charles Kahn III, of the Federation of American Hospitals, and Robert Reischauer of the Urban Institute, among others

Media are invited to attend. Please RSVP to Hollis Hope or Bonnie Austin, 202.292.6700.

Note: Webcasts of selected sessions will be available at kaisernetwork.org/healthcast/academyhealth.13nov02, a service of the Kaiser Family Foundation, after 5 p.m. ET on Thursday, November 14.

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The HCFO program (www.hcfo.net) supports research, policy analysis, demonstration, and evaluation projects that examine major changes in health care financing and organization that have current policy implications. AcademyHealth (www.academyhealth.org) is the national program office for HCFO. It is the professional home for health services researchers, policy analysts, and practitioners, and a leading, non-partisan resource for the best in health research and policy.

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