Health care systems may be financed in various ways, including through government funding, taxation, out-of-pocket payments, private insurance, and donations or voluntary aid. RAND research explores the effects of corporate and government health care financing policies on such groups as patients, businesses, hospitals, and physician-providers.
Use of and spending on complementary and alternative medicine have flattened out. Including providers of these services in new delivery systems such as accountable care organizations could help slow growth in national health care spending.
HIT's disappointing performance primarily stems from sluggish adoption of health IT systems, systems that are not interoperable or easy to use, and failure of providers and institutions to do their part by reengineering care processes.
Policymakers in countries around the world are faced with rising health care costs and are debating ways to reform health care to reduce expenditures.
Comparative effectiveness research conducted over the past decade has had a limited impact on the way medical care is delivered, but many opportunities exist to help doctors and others in the medical system translate such research into better patient care.
ACA-mandated payment reforms need to achieve more than a one-time cost saving.
Innovative payment reform initiatives occur in both the public and private sector, but the optimal role in such reforms of the public sector, specifically the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, is up for debate
Enrollment is increasing in consumer-directed health insurance plans, which feature high deductibles and a personal health care savings account.
This study estimated how healthy people value insurance coverage of specialty drugs, defined as high-cost drugs that treat cancer and other serious health conditions like multiple sclerosis, by quantifying willingness to pay via a survey.
The financial burden of prescription drugs has declined recently for the nonelderly. The decrease is probably due to increased use of generic drugs. The financial burden remains high among those with public insurance and those with low incomes.
Rising health costs reduce employment-based private insurance availability and enrollment, and the financial protection provided by it, especially for middle-class families.
The CHIP expansions to children in higher income families were associated with limited uptake of public coverage.
Under bundled payments, doctors, hospitals, and other providers share one fee for treating all aspects of a procedure such as a hip replacement or a chronic disease like diabetes. The approach should eliminate unnecessary care and improve quality, but putting it into practice is proving to be more difficult than anticipated.
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.
This article translates aggregate numbers about health spending into concrete measures that consumers can relate to.
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.
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.
This study found that the number of emergency departments operating in the US from 1990 to 2009 declined by 27%. EDs with safety-net status, for-profit ownership, and low profit margin were at higher risk of closure.
An analysis of two rules that allow small businesses to avoid participating in health reform concludes they will have only a minor impact because relatively few businesses are likely to take advantage of the options.
An analysis of two rules that allow small businesses to avoid participating in health reform concludes they will have only a minor impact because relatively few businesses are likely to take advantage of the options.
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