We use unique data from an insurer that exclusively offers high-deductible, "consumer-directed" health plans to identify the effect of plan features, notably the spending account, on health care spending. Our results show that the marginal dollar in the spending account is entirely spent on...

The impact of ownership on the cost-efficiency of U.S. hospitals / Ryan L. Mutter, Michael D. Rosko -- Measuring and decomposing productivity change : the basics / Bert M. Balk -- Competition and market concentration / Nazmi Sari -- Efficiency and productivity changes in large urban hospitals...

Quantifying national spending on wellness and prevention / George Miller, Charles Roehrig, Paul Hughes-Cromwick, Craig Lake -- Spillover effects of prescription drug withdrawals / John Cawley, John A. Rizzo -- The psychology of nutrition messages / Heather Schofield, Sendhil Mullainathan --...

By exploiting a unique health insurance benefit design, we provide novel evidence on the causal association between outpatient and inpatient care. Our results indicate that greater outpatient spending was associated with more hospital admissions: a $100 increase in outpatient spending was...

There is an extensive literature on the extent to which public health insurance coverage through Medicaid induces less private health insurance coverage. However, little is known about the effect of other components of the health care safety net in crowding out private coverage. We examine the...

Despite plausible mechanisms, little research has evaluated potential changes in health behaviors as a result of the Medicaid expansions of the 1980s and 1990s for pregnant women. Accordingly, we provide the first national study of the effects of Medicaid on health behaviors for pregnant women....

The 1996 Personal Responsibility Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act dramatically altered the economic incentive to bear children out-of-wedlock for economically disadvantaged women or couples most likely to avail themselves of welfare programs. We use data from vital statistics and a...

In this paper, we take a structural approach to investigate the effects of wages and working hours on health behaviors of low-educated persons using variation in wages and hours caused by changes in economic activity. We find that increases in hours are associated with an increase in cigarette...