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.
Identifying the costs of dementia is challenging because persons who have it are likely to have co-existing chronic health problems, making isolating the costs among other costs difficult. Also, it is unclear how to attribute a monetary cost to informal caregiving.
The Affordable Care Act is a substantial reform of the U.S. health care insurance system. RAND researchers assessed the act’s potential economic effects on Pennsylvania, factoring in whether the state includes an expansion of Medicaid.
Work presented in this report sought to assess the healthcare and economic burden of the hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection in the United Kingdom using a cohort simulation model.
For Arkansas, the Affordable Care Act will result in an increase in GDP of around $550 million and the creation of about 6,200 jobs. The new law will also increase health insurance coverage by 400,000 newly insured individuals.
The military's TRICARE Reserve Select program offers reservists the option of purchasing health insurance through the military on terms that compare favorably with typical employer benefits, but the program does not appear to be effectively targeting those most likely to be uninsured.
The pharmaceutical industry can and should reconfigure its considerable resources to develop innovative and meaningful business models that are based on services that improve access and adherence to prescription drugs for common chronic conditions.
Eliminating a key part of health care reform that requires all Americans to have health insurance would sharply lower the number of people gaining coverage, but would not dramatically increase the cost of buying policies through new insurance exchanges.
With the need for HIV services in developing countries rising and the availability of funding flat or declining, existing resources should be better leveraged to help provide life-saving services to more people in need.
Medicare's payment for physician work and malpractice liability expenses is the same regardless of where a service is provided, but payments differ for facility-related components of care.
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.
Offers two rigorously developed tools for assessing the quality of care received by patients with carpal tunnel syndrome and for determining whether surgery is necessary for individual patients.
In order to inform the European Commission's formal Impact Assessment for a revision to the Tobacco Products Directive, this study provides an overview of evidence for tobacco product regulation and an analysis of health and economic implications.
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act will increase insurance offer rates at small businesses. By 2016, rates would increase from 53 to 77 percent at firms with ten or fewer workers and from 71 to 90 percent at firms with 11 to 25 workers.
Explores the idea of allowing Medicare-eligible beneficiaries to use Medicare to cover health services received in Mexico.
The options available to Massachusetts as it considers establishing a comparative effectiveness center to guide health care purchasing decisions are feasible, but design decisions depend on the prioritization of comparative effectiveness research.
This document explores how increased use of bundled payment approaches would affect health system performance along nine dimensions.
This document explores how expanding Medicaid/SCHIP eligibility would affect health system performance along nine dimensions.
This document explores how a refundable tax credit to offset the cost of health insurance premiums would affect health system performance along nine dimensions.
This document explores how creating or expanding access to purchasing pools would affect health system performance along nine dimensions.
This document explores how physician pay for performance (P4P) programs would affect health system performance along nine dimensions.
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