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KDI 경제교육·정보센터

ENG
  • 경제배움
  • Economic

    Information

    and Education

    Center

최신자료
Screening Through Soft Spending Limits: Evidence from the Medicare Therapy Cap
NBER
2025.04.30
Governments and firms often employ soft spending limits to restrict overspending while still allowing exceptions on a case-by-case basis. This paper studies a Medicare policy which capped per-patient physical therapy spending, with exceptions for patients with documented medical need. The cap reduced spending by 8 percent without harming patient health, with the targeting improvements driven by Medicare discretion in granting exceptions rather than improved provider screening. However, the documentation requirement also introduced horizontal inequity: conditional on need, lower-income and minority patients were more likely to be screened out, as they tended to see providers with poorer documentation practices.