Abstract
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) has shocked the health care industry, promulgating an increased demand for curative health care services. This thesis uses data from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) for the periods 2008-2016 to model health care utilization among managed care enrollees. The study design stratifies insurance type for individuals with a Health Maintenance Organization (HMO) or other type of managed care health insurance. The iterative model specifications in this thesis estimate the effect of managed health care insurance on curative health care utilization. The final model specification is the Multilevel Mixed-Effects Negative Binomial Regression (MENBREG). Ultimately, we find strong evidence to suggest individuals with HMO insurance decreases the expected number of curative visits to providers and hospital-based services.