About

Professor Colleen Carey joined the Department of Policy Analysis and Management at Cornell University in 2015. She is an economist whose research focuses on the industrial organization of health care, with particular attention to federal regulation of health insurance markets. Her work informs the design of publicly-subsidized health insurance markets such as the Affordable Care Act marketplaces. She is especially interested in the effectiveness of federal regulations, including reinsurance and risk adjustment, in neutralizing adverse selection in these markets. Previously, she was a Robert Wood Johnson Scholar in Health Policy Research at the University of Michigan and served as a Staff Economist at the Council of Economic Advisers. Her research also explores how financial relationships between physicians and drug firms influence prescribing behavior, the impact of state policies aimed at reducing prescription opioid abuse, and the health outcomes of recipients of Social Security Disability Insurance.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Environmental health
• Medicine
• Political Science
• Actuarial science
• Business
• Geography
• Demography
• Public economics
• Virology
• Economic growth
• Demographic economics
• Economics

Selected publications

• Data and Code for: "The Impact of Provider Payments on Health Care Utilization of Low-Income Individuals: Evidence from Medicare and Medicaid"

  ICPSR Data Holdings · 2026-03-25

  datasetOpen access

  Provider payments are the key determinant of insurance generosity within many health insurance programs covering low-income populations. This paper analyzes the effects of a large, federally-mandated provider payment increase for primary care services provided to low-income elderly and disabled individuals. Drawing upon comprehensive administrative payment and utilization data, we leverage variation across beneficiaries and across providers in the policy-induced payment increase in difference-in-differences and triple differences research designs. The estimates indicate that the provider payment reform led to a 6.3% increase in the targeted services provided to eligible beneficiaries, indicating an implied payment elasticity of 1.2. The provider payment reform also decreased the fraction of low-income beneficiaries with no primary care visit in a year by 9%. Heterogeneity analysis indicates that the payment increase led to an expansion of utilization for many subgroups, with somewhat larger effects among beneficiaries who are younger, are white, and live in areas with many primary care providers per capita.

  PublisherDOI

• Data and Code for: "The Impact of Provider Payments on Health Care Utilization of Low-Income Individuals: Evidence from Medicare and Medicaid"

  ICPSR Data Holdings · 2026-03-25

  datasetOpen access

  Provider payments are the key determinant of insurance generosity within many health insurance programs covering low-income populations. This paper analyzes the effects of a large, federally-mandated provider payment increase for primary care services provided to low-income elderly and disabled individuals. Drawing upon comprehensive administrative payment and utilization data, we leverage variation across beneficiaries and across providers in the policy-induced payment increase in difference-in-differences and triple differences research designs. The estimates indicate that the provider payment reform led to a 6.3% increase in the targeted services provided to eligible beneficiaries, indicating an implied payment elasticity of 1.2. The provider payment reform also decreased the fraction of low-income beneficiaries with no primary care visit in a year by 9%. Heterogeneity analysis indicates that the payment increase led to an expansion of utilization for many subgroups, with somewhat larger effects among beneficiaries who are younger, are white, and live in areas with many primary care providers per capita.

  PublisherDOI

• Why Does Disability Insurance Enrollment Increase During Recessions? Evidence from Medicare

  The Review of Economics and Statistics · 2026-02-04

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Social Security Disability Insurance (DI) awards rise in recessions, especially for workers over age 50. We use Medicare data to investigate how health, entry costs, and age-based DI eligibility rules shape this pattern. Entrants induced by recessions have lower medical spending and mortality than typical recipients. Entry responses to unemployment jump two- to fourfold at ages 50 and 55, when eligibility rules relax. Using these age-based discontinuities as instruments, we find no shift in marginal entrants' health across unemployment levels. These findings show that DI's age-based eligibility rules are a primary driver of cyclical entry, while health shocks are not.

  PublisherDOI

• Data and Code for: "The Impact of Provider Payments on Health Care Utilization of Low-Income Individuals: Evidence from Medicare and Medicaid"

  ICPSR Data Holdings · 2026-03-26

  datasetOpen access

  Provider payments are the key determinant of insurance generosity within many health insurance programs covering low-income populations. This paper analyzes the effects of a large, federally-mandated provider payment increase for primary care services provided to low-income elderly and disabled individuals. Drawing upon comprehensive administrative payment and utilization data, we leverage variation across beneficiaries and across providers in the policy-induced payment increase in difference-in-differences and triple differences research designs. The estimates indicate that the provider payment reform led to a 6.3% increase in the targeted services provided to eligible beneficiaries, indicating an implied payment elasticity of 1.2. The provider payment reform also decreased the fraction of low-income beneficiaries with no primary care visit in a year by 9%. Heterogeneity analysis indicates that the payment increase led to an expansion of utilization for many subgroups, with somewhat larger effects among beneficiaries who are younger, are white, and live in areas with many primary care providers per capita.

  PublisherDOI

• The Impact of Provider Payments on Health Care Utilization of Low-Income Individuals: Evidence from Medicare and Medicaid

  American Economic Journal Economic Policy · 2025-01-31 · 5 citations

  article

  Provider payments are the key determinant of insurance generosity within many health insurance programs covering low-income populations. This paper analyzes a large, federally mandated provider payment increase for primary care services provided to low-income elderly and disabled individuals. Using comprehensive administrative data, we leverage variation across beneficiaries and providers in the policy-induced payment increase in difference-in-differences and triple differences research designs. We find the payment increase led to a 6 percent increase in the targeted services for eligible beneficiaries, implying a payment elasticity of 1.2, and decreased the fraction of low-income beneficiaries with no primary care visit in a year by 9 percent. (JEL G22, I11, I13, I18, I38)

  PublisherDOI

• Nothing for something: Marketing cancer drugs to physicians increases prescribing without improving mortality

  Journal of Public Economics · 2025-01-28 · 2 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Partial Outsourcing of Public Programs: Evidence on Determinants of Choice in Medicare

  The Review of Economics and Statistics · 2025-03-05

  article

  Abstract Many public programs let individuals choose between publicly provided benefits and a subsidized private alternative. We investigate health insurance choice in Medicare—a setting with vast geographic variation in the uptake of the private alternative. We analyze insurance decisions among individuals who move to quantify the relative importance of individual-specific factors (e.g., preferences or income) and place-specific factors (e.g., local health insurance options). We find roughly 40% of the geographic variation in the share selecting private coverage is due to place-based factors, while the remainder due to individuals. Our findings inform the potential for place-based policy to address geographic disparities.

  PublisherDOI

• Real-World Evidence for Medicare Drug Price Negotiations

  JAMA · 2025-12-04 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  This Viewpoint discusses how real-world evidence studies could help the US Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services align spending with value in their drug price negotiations.

  PublisherDOI

• Recent court ruling could increase the size and administrative complexity of the 340B program

  Health Affairs Scholar · 2024-12-01 · 5 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  The 340B program allows certain hospitals and clinics to use outpatient drugs purchased at substantial discounts on insured patients, generating profits to fund care. The size of these profits depends on the number of prescriptions filled by participating hospital or clinics' insured patients that also meet the Health Resources and Services Agency's definition of an eligible patient. A recent court case has challenged the Agency's longstanding definition of a patient, resulting in new definition that could significantly expand the size of the program and create conflicts when an insured patient satisfies the new definition for more than one hospital or clinic participating in the program. We use Medicare Part D data from 2018 to simulate the proportion of prescription drug fills eligible for 340B discounts and total program spending under both existing and new definitions. We found that the new definition could increase the share of 340B-eligible fills in Medicare Part D by 25%, from 12% of fills to 16%, and that the share of fills subject to a conflict could double, from 1% of fills to 1%-2%. Our results suggest that the new definition could increase covered entities' 340B profits by roughly a third.

  PublisherDOI

• Nothing for Something: Marketing Cancer Drugs to Physicians Increases Prescribing Without Improving Mortality

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01 · 2 citations

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Sarah Miller

  44 shared

• Marika Cabral

  The University of Texas at Austin

  38 shared

• Thomas C. Buchmueller

  University of Michigan–Ann Arbor

  28 shared

• S. Michael Gaddis

  Brigham Young University

  13 shared

• Nicholas V. DiRago

  10 shared

• Stephen H. Shore

  Georgia State University

  9 shared

• Giacomo Meille

  Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality

  8 shared

• Meiying Li

  South China Agricultural University

  6 shared