Publications by Douglas A. Wissoker for Retirement Policy

The paper provides an independent evaluation of the SIPP Synthetic Beta File. This file, created by the Bureau of the Census, is intended to provide a public use database with similar statistical properties as the confidential Social Security Administration's earnings and benefit data linked to the SIPP. There is much to praise in the Census work. Many univariate distributions were "spot on." Unweighted regression analyses had some problems and results for them were mixed. In policy simulation modeling there were many instances of differences between the Synthetic and actual data that would have led researchers to wrong conclusions.

Medicare has paid skilled nursing facilities (SNFs) using a prospective payment system (PPS) since 1998. This report offers policy options to refine Medicare’s payment of SNF services by developing alternative patient classification models. Three models classify patients according to expected non-therapy ancillary (NTA) costs: two models use data from the SNF to model NTA costs; a third adds data from prior hospital stays. A fourth model predicts rehabilitation therapy costs using patient characteristics. The fifth uses Diagnostic Related Groups to predict total SNF care costs. The report also simulates options for outlier payments for exceptionally high-cost cases.

Return to list of authors.