The paper examines whether, among inpatient psychiatric admissions in California, for-profit (FP) hospitals engage in cream skimming, i.e., choosing patients for some characteristic(s) other than their need for care, which enhances the profitability of the provider. We propose a novel approach...

Public providers have no financial incentive to respect their legal obligation to exempt the poor from user fees. Health Equity Funds (HEFs) aim to make exemptions effective by giving NGOs responsibility for assessing eligibility and compensating providers for lost revenue. We use the geographic...

We estimate the impact on out-of-pocket (OOP) medical expenditure of a major reform in Thailand that greatly extended health insurance coverage to achieve universality while implementing supply-side measures intended to deliver cost-effective care from an increased, but modest, public health...