ArticleThe quarterly journal of economics2024
MONITORING FOR WASTE: EVIDENCE FROM MEDICARE AUDITS.
Article in The quarterly journal of economics, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed.
- Payment integrity in government programs: Takeaways from incorporating the behavioral sciences in US federal evaluations.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Can Machine Learning Target Health Care Fraud? Evidence from Medicare Hospitalizations.Journal of policy analysis and management : [the journal of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management] · 2026Article
- The cost of readmissions in hospitals: the case of the Spanish public hospitals.Health economics review · 2024Article
- Hospital behavior over the private equity life cycle.Journal of health economics · 2024Article
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Authors and funding
1 author.
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Abstract
This paper examines the tradeoffs of monitoring for wasteful public spending. By penalizing unnecessary spending, monitoring improves the quality of public expenditure and incentivizes firms to invest in compliance technology. I study a large Medicare program that monitored for unnecessary healthcare spending and consider its effect on government savings, provider behavior, and patient health. Every dollar Medicare spent on monitoring generated $24-29 in government savings. The majority of savings stem from the deterrence of future care, rather than reclaimed payments from prior care. I do not find evidence that the health of the marginal patient is harmed, indicating that monitoring primarily deters low-value care. Monitoring does increase provider administrative costs, but these costs are mostly incurred upfront and include investments in technology to assess the medical necessity of care.
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