We examine why managed care plans are less expensive than traditional indemnity insurance plans. Our database consists of the insurance experiences of over 200,000 state and local employees in Massachusetts and their families, who are insured in a single pool. Within this group, average HMO...

We examine the effects of Proposition 2-1/2--a property tax limitation law approved by Massachusetts voters in 1980--and assess voter satisfaction with these effects. We find that the proposition had a smaller effect on local revenues and spending than expected, as a result of both amendments to...

We propose a method of quantifying non-fatal health on a 0-1 QALY scale that details the impact of specific symptoms and impairments and is not based on ratings of counterfactual scenarios. Measures of general health status are regressed on health impairments and symptoms in different domains,...

Medical care is characterized by enormous inefficiency. Costs are higher and outcomes worse than almost all analyses of the industry suggest should occur. In other industries characterized by inefficiency, efficient firms expand to take over the market, or new firms enter to eliminate...