Financing the efficient delivery of medical services while reducing costs for consumers as well as health care providers is among the most challenging domestic policy problems many countries face. RAND addresses health economics issues through innovative, high-profile research in an effort to improve the efficiency of health care organizations, reduce costs for providers and consumers, and improve financing in health care markets.
In its second term, the Obama Administration can restrain further health care spending growth—without compromising quality—by employing four broad strategies: fostering efficient and accountable providers, engaging and empowering consumers, promoting population health, and facilitating high-value innovation.
Report
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.
Report
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has piqued employers' interest in new benefit designs. This paper reviews consumer-controlled personal health management systems that could help individuals control and manage their health care.
News Release
Increased consolidation among health plans nationally may benefit consumers by lowering hospital prices, at least in those regions where health plans are the most consolidated.
Journal Article
Increased consolidation among health plans nationally may benefit consumers by lowering hospital prices, at least in those regions where health plans are the most consolidated.
News Release
Fast-rising health care costs have eaten nearly all the income gains made by a median-income American family of four over the past decade, leaving them with just $95 per month in extra income, after accounting for taxes and price increases.
Research Brief
Fast-rising health care costs have eaten nearly all the income gains made by a median-income American family of four over the past decade, leaving them with just $95 per month in extra income, after accounting for taxes and price increases.
Journal Article
This article translates aggregate numbers about health spending into concrete measures that consumers can relate to.
Journal Article
This white paper prepared for the Agency on Healthcare Research and Quality examines methodological issues raised by the generation of public-reporting of scores for measuring health care provider performance.
Journal Article
Medicare's National Pilot Program on Payment Bundling should use hip fracture and joint replacement as the conditions to include and use longer episodes, capturing a higher percentage of costs and hospital readmissions but adding little financial risk.
Report
This book examines changes to California's workers' compensation affecting medical care provided to injured workers and identifies areas in which more changes could improve quality and efficiency of care.
Commentary
The state needs to deal with prison overcrowding and inadequate medical care for prisoners in ways that don't simply transfer the burden to county criminal justice systems and the healthcare safety nets of local communities, writes Lois Davis.
Commentary
Because the budget crisis is really a crisis, it behooves physicians to answer the waste question as rapidly as possible. Without an answer, there is no hope that an appropriate policy process for reining in health care costs will be identified, writes Robert H. Brook.
Research Brief
Summarizes key RAND studies on the causes of obesity, its economic and health consequences, and potential strategies for prevention, including work on health care costs, junk food, food deserts, school meals, and proximity of parks.
Journal Article
This commentary argues that physicians must take the lead in identifying and eliminating waste in US health care.
Project
Policymakers are facing new challenges as they implement the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA). RAND COMPARE is a modeling tool that simulates the impact of implementation decisions on insurance coverage, premiums, and health care spending.
Research Brief
If all veterans suffering from major depression and posttraumatic stress disorder were to receive evidence-based treatments, policy simulations suggest that cost savings generated would be $138 million (15 percent) over two years.
Report
This paper outlines the issues, and finds merit in developing non-standard incentives, such as prizes, to support excellence in health research in addition to 'standard' performance management and routine inspection.
Journal Article
Decreased use of myeloid colony-stimulating factors in patients at lower or intermediate risk of febrile neutropenia from high-risk chemotherapy regimens could yield substantial cost savings without compromising patient outcomes.
Past Event
Arthur Kellermann, vice president and director of RAND Health, will lead a program in May about the rising costs of health care.
Multimedia
On May 24, 2011, the RAND Corporation presented “Rising Costs of Health Care” as part of its Issues in Focus public outreach series in Santa Monica, California. The program featured Arthur Kellermann, vice president and director of RAND Health.
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