Economists have long suggested that to be reliable, a preferred medical care price index should employ time-varying weights to measure outcomes-adjusted changes in the price of treating an episode of illness. In this article, we report on several years of research developing alternative indexes...

Health care costs represent a nearly 18% of U.S. gross domestic product and 20% of government spending. While there is detailed information on where these health care dollars are spent, there is much less evidence on how this spending affects health. The research in Measuring and Modeling Health...

We examine six molecules facing initial loss of US exclusivity (LOE, from patent expiration or challenges) between June 2009 and May 2013 that were among the 50 most prescribed molecules in May 2013. We examine prices per day of therapy (from the perspective of average revenue received by retail...

The Bureau of Labor Statistics' Prescription Drug Consumer Price Index (CPI-Rx) has been the focus of considerable controversy in recent years. The CPI-Rx limits its sampling frame to transactions in retail outpatient outlets, and excludes prescription pharmaceuticals dispensed in hospitals,...

Using annual cross-sectional data on over 100,000 adolescents aged 12-17, we studied academic and behavioral outcomes among those who were and were not likely affected by FDA warnings regarding the safety of antidepressants. Just before the FDA warnings, adolescents with probable depression had...