This paper makes use of a unique "natural experiment" in the design of intergovernmental grants. The State of Ohio has dramatically altered the method by which local public mental health care is financed. The manner in which the grant mechanism has been altered allows for the estimation of...

We examine the price of treating episodes of acute phase major depression over the 1991-1996 time period. We combine data from a large retrospective medical claims data base (MarketScanTM, from the MedStat Group) with clinical literature and expert clinical opinion elicited from a two-state...

We estimate the increment in Massachusetts Medicaid program costs attributable to smoking from December 20, 1991, to 1998. We describe how our methods improve upon earlier estimates of analogous costs at the national level. Current costs to the Massachusetts Medicaid program approximate the...

Medicare's Prospective Payment System (PPS) for hospitals was phased-in during the 1884 Federal Fiscal Year. While many providers of psychiatric inpatient care were exempted from PPS patients treated in general hospital beds outside of psychiatric units (scatterbeds) were not. This allows for an...

Puzzling results of a positive association between the number of physicians per capita and the level of fees for physician services have been reported in the literature. These results may be due to misspecification of econometric models and use of data aggre-gated across medical specialties. It...

Despite the popularity of pay-for-performance (P4P) among health policymakers and private insurers as a tool for improving quality of care, there is little empirical basis for its effectiveness. We use data from published performance reports of physician medical groups contracting with a large...

Broad claims are frequently made that new medications will offset all or part of their costs by reducing other areas of Medicaid spending. In this paper we examine the net impact on spending for new drugs used to treat schizophrenia. We extend research in this area by taking a new approach to...

Health accounts document changes over time in the level and composition of health spending. There has been a continued evolution in the ability to track such outlays. Less rapid has been the ability to interpret changes in spending. In this paper we apply quality adjusted price indexes for...

Health care expenditures have been increasing sharply in the last ten years, with spending on mental health disorders being particularly prominent. Over the same time period, a number of new antipsychotic medications have been added to the armamentarium for treatment of persons diagnosed with...

Health plans paid by capitation have an incentive to distort the quality of services they offer to attract profitable and to deter unprofitable enrollees. We characterize plans' rationing as imposing a show that the profit maximizing shadow price depends on the dispersion in health costs, how...