Health Economics and Financing
2011
Assessing the Performance of Military Treatment Facilities — 2011
Discusses the potential usefulness and limitations of using utilization and cost metrics to evaluate the performance of U.S. Department of Defense military treatment facilities.
Behavioral Health Insurance Parity: Does Oregon's Experience Presage the National Experience with the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act? — 2011
Analysis of Oregon's state parity law suggests that behavioral health insurance parity rules restricting how plans manage mental health and substance abuse services can improve insurance protections without substantial increases in total costs.
Can the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute Become Relevant to Controlling Medical Costs and Improving Value? — 2011
Research sponsored by the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute can help patients make better decisions by comparing the effectiveness of alternative therapies, but it is constrained from considering the costs of therapies it compares.
Challenges to Value-Enhancing Innovation in Health Care Delivery: Commonalities and Contrasts with Innovation in Drugs and Devices — 2011
Discusses obstacles to steering innovation in health care toward activities that are worth their social costs and away from other innovative activities and considers drugs, devices, and delivery, with particular attention to delivery.
Comparative Effectiveness Research: Does the Emperor Have Clothes — 2011
The move toward comparative effectiveness research may be a positive one for complementary and alternative medicine, but a more critical evaluation might be in order.
Cost-Effectiveness Analysis of a Low-Fat Diet in the Prevention of Breast and Ovarian Cancer — 2011
A low fat diet may be a cost-effective strategy for preventing breast and ovarian cancers.
Cost Implications of Improving Blood Pressure Management Among U.S. Adults — 2011
Payers will find it slightly more cost-effective to improve care for moderate than for severe hypertension.
Cost Implications to Health Care Payers of Improving Glucose Management among Adults with Type 2 Diabetes — 2011
Improving glucose management among adults with type 2 diabetes has modest costs compared to diabetes-related health care expenditures.
A Decade of Health Care Cost Growth Has Wiped Out Real Income Gains for an Average US Family — 2011
This article translates aggregate numbers about health spending into concrete measures that consumers can relate to.
The Effects of Consumer-Directed Health Plans on Episodes of Health Care — 2011
About two-thirds of the cost savings from high deductible/consumer-directed health plans are from reductions in number of episodes; the remaining one-third of the savings are from reductions in costs per episode.
Facts, Facts, Facts: What Is a Physician to Do — 2011
This commentary argues that it is timely to reengage physicians in the discussion of international comparative data about health care and to ask why the United States is so provincial in designing the systems by which care is delivered.
Focus on the Rising Cost of Health Care — 2011
A substantial body of RAND research has focused on evaluating policies to lower health care costs; promoting health and preventing disease; and improving health system value and quality of care.
Geographic Variation in Physicians' Responses to a Reimbursement Change — 2011
Although there has been considerable discussion of how the changes that the ACA makes in Medicare reimbursement might affect Medicare spending, on average, there has been little to no explicit recognition that the effects may vary geographically.
Healthcare Spending and Preventive Care in High-Deductible and Consumer-Directed Health Plans — 2011
The largest-ever assessment of high-deductible health plans find that such plans significantly cut health spending but families with such plans also cut preventive care such as cancer screening, childhood immunizations, and routine diabetes testing.
High-Deductible Health Plans Cut Spending but Also Reduce Preventive Care — 2011
High-deductible plans significantly reduce health care spending but also lead consumers to cut back on their use of preventive health care -- even though high-deductible plans waive the deductible for such care.
Household Portfolio Choices, Health Status and Health Care Systems: A Cross-Country Analysis Based on SHARE — 2011
Sketches a theoretical framework in which household portfolio decisions are a function of both individual and systemic characteristics and tests its main implications based on SHARE data.
How Do Consumer-Directed Health Plans Affect Vulnerable Populations? — 2011
Consumers in high deductible health plans use less health care, but they also cut use of preventive services, even though plans exempt preventive services from the deductible.
How Does Growth in Health Care Costs Affect the American Family? — 2011
Health care costs nearly doubled between 1999 and 2009, which left the average 2009 family with only $95 more per month than in 1999. If costs had matched the consumer price index's rise, the average family would have an additional $450 per month.
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