Virtual health is the sum of telehealth (patient–provider communication at a distance) and autonomous health (electronic devices communicating with providers and patients at a distance). The COVID-19 pandemic and its attendant social distancing led to a sharp increase in the use of virtual...

Owing to a series of incremental legislative and regulatory changes in recent years, the practice of pharmacy in Idaho, particularly with respect to pharmacists' prescribing authority, has expanded far beyond what is permitted in any other state. This paper reviews the recent history of Idaho's...

This study summarizes what we know and do not know, in both economic theory and empirical practice, about the potential to more closely approximate competitive markets in healthcare and insurance in ways that will do more good than harm to the current dysfunctional system. The alternatives to...

The Healthcare Openness and Access Project (HOAP) is a collection of state-by- state comparative data on the flexibility and discretion US patients and providers have in managing healthcare. HOAP combines these data to produce 37 indicators of openness and accessibility. In turn, these...

This paper explores the differences in incentives and thus behavior between for-profit and not-for-profit firms. I investigate a terrible choice nursing homes faced during the pandemic: isolate residents to prevent deaths from COVID-19 but doing so may increase total deaths by aggravating mental...

Enrollment in state-optional Medicaid expansions has significantly exceeded even the most optimistic forecasts. The open-ended federal financing of new adult Medicaid enrollees at elevated match rates — in excess of 90 percent — creates incentives for states and healthcare providers to...

Observers of all ideological persuasions are concerned about the long-term decline in male labor force participation. Explanations for this drop fall into one of three categories. Some analysts, including those in the Obama administration's Council of Economic Advisers, argue that declining...

The recent presidential campaign revived concerns about the state of the American job market. Many observers who are convinced that improving employment indicators mask pervasive hardship cite the increase in the number of prime-age men (those between the ages of 25 and 54) who are neither...

Created as part of the Affordable Care Act, the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) is charged with saving money for the Medicare system. To that end, IPAB was set apart from the political process, which has for decades proved itself unable to control Medicare costs. Yet no members have...

In the United States, all newly developed drugs undergo a lengthy review process conducted by the Federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA). These regulatory delays are costly for drug manufacturers and patients. We collected data on review times of drugs approved between 1999 and 2005 and...