This paper reviews the public sector role in the provision of health care. A first role of the government is to use tax policy to correct externalities associated with individual behaviors. Estimates suggest that the external effects of many `sins' such as alcohol consumption are greater than...

The aim of this paper is to assess the impact of the Community Health Center (CHC) on health levels in the U.S. Using infant mortality as the underlying health indicator, a time series of large counties as the data set, and multivariate regression techniques, we investigate the extent to which...

Mortality rates in the US fell more rapidly during the late 19th and early 20th Centuries than any other period in American history. This decline coincided with an epidemiological transition and the disappearance of a mortality "penalty" associated with living in urban areas. There is little...

In 2006, Massachusetts passed health care reform legislation designed to achieve nearly universal coverage through a combination of insurance market reforms, mandates, and subsidies that later served as the model for national reform. Using data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance...

Governments in many low- and middle-income countries are developing health insurance products as a complement to tax-funded, subsidized provision of health care through publicly operated facilities. This paper discusses two rationales for this transition. First, health insurance would boost...

There are ongoing debates around the world over the value of private supplements to public health insurance systems. We investigate this issue in the context of one of the world's deadliest diseases, diabetes, and one of the countries with the worst diabetes problems in the world, Mexico. We...

The COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly affected the United States healthcare system, resulting in major disruptions in the delivery of essential care and causing crippling financial losses that threaten the viability of millions of medical practices. There is little empirical evidence on the types...

Adverse behavioral risk factors contribute to a large share of deaths. We examine the effects on life expectancy (LE) and quality-adjusted life expectancy (QALE) of changes in six major behavioral risk factors over the 1960-2010 period: smoking, obesity, heavy alcohol use, and unsafe use of...

Does Canada's publicly funded, single payer health care system deliver better health outcomes and distribute health resources more equitably than the multi-payer heavily private U.S. system? We show that the efficacy of health care systems cannot be usefully evaluated by comparisons of infant...

This paper provides a few historical notes on government involvement in health, followed by a summary of the theoretical arguments that economists offer in its support. Irving Fisher's views and recommendations about health are examined in the light of today's perceptions concerning health,...