"The NBER Bulletin on Aging and Health provides summaries of publications like this. You can sign up to receive the NBER Bulletin on Aging and Health by email. Economists seeking to improve the efficiency of health care delivery frequently emphasize two issues: the fragmented structure of...

"Why doesn't healthcare get better and cheaper? The evolution of the cell phones that we carry in our pockets demonstrates that quality can increase while prices fall. Why not in healthcare? Our answer is that the health sector generates the wrong kinds of innovation. It is too easy to profit...

We analyze the effect that competition between HMOs has on the cost and quality of medical services. Our key result is that increasing competition enhances consumer utility while also moderating the impact of managed care on quality and costs. Indeed, we find that heightened competition between...

Many goods and services can be readily provided through a series of unconnected transactions, but in health care, close coordination over time and within care episodes improves both health outcomes and efficiency. Close coordination is problematic in the U.S. healthcare system because the...