The past decade witnessed a dramatic increase in inpatient hospital payment rates for patients with private insurance relative to payment rates for those covered by Medicare. A natural question is whether the widening private-Medicare payment rate difference had implications for the hospital care received by patients just before and after turning 65—the age at which there is a substantial shift from private to Medicare coverage. Using a large discharge dataset covering the period 2001–2011, we tracked changes at age 65 in the following dimensions of hospital care: overall hospitalization rates, case mix, referral-sensitive surgeries, length of stay, full established charges, number of procedures, mortality, and composite measures of inpatient quality and patient safety. In all cases we found either no change or a change that was small and inconsistent with payment rate changes during the study period.

中文翻译：

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随着私人和医疗保险付款率之间的差异扩大，在65岁之前和之后的住院医院治疗是否已改变？

在过去十年中，私人保险患者的住院住院付款率相对于Medicare承保者的付款率急剧上升。一个自然的问题是，私人医疗保险支付率差异的扩大是否会影响患者在65岁之前和之后（即从私人医疗保险向医疗保险的实质转变）的年龄所获得的医院护理。使用涵盖2001年至2011年的大量出院数据集，我们追踪了以下65岁患者在医院护理方面的变化：总体住院率，病例组合，对转诊敏感的手术，住院时间，已确定的全部收费，手术数量，死亡率，以及住院质量和患者安全性的综合衡量指标。