Bulletin n. 2/2008 | ||
September 2008 | ||
Swati Mukerjee, Quinn Michael |
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Federal Medicaid Assistance To States: Impact On Prenatal Care | ||
in Contemporary Economic Policy , Volume 26 Issue 3 , 2008 , 380 - 397 | ||
In the context of dramatically increasing U.S. health-care costs, this paper contributes to an ongoing debate discussing proposals to replace the government's current policy of matching state Medicaid spending with a block grant system. State-level panel data analysis provides evidence that, ceteris paribus, increasing the federal matching formula has a negative impact on prenatal care. This aggregate result masks significant differences between high- and low-spending states and appears to be driven by the high-spending states thus implying that a 2-track approach to Medicaid funding may be more appropriate than the current system. | ||