Competition and prospective payment have been widely used to control health care costs but may together provide incentives to selectively reduce expenditures on high-cost relative to low-cost users. We use patient discharge and hospital financial data from California to examine the effects of...

Background: Medical cost-effectiveness analyses (CEA) traditionally treat patients as isolated individuals and neglect the effects of improvement in patients' health on the welfare of their family members. Recent analyses of the theoretical foundations of CEA suggest that cost-effectiveness...

Competition and prospective payment have been widely used to control health care costs but may together provide incentives to selectively reduce expenditures on high-cost relative to low-cost users. We use patient discharge and hospital financial data from California to examine the effects of...

Comparative effectiveness research (CER) can provide valuable information for patients, providers and payers. These stakeholders differ in their incentives to invest in CER. To maximize benefits from public investments in CER, it is important to understand the value of CER from the perspectives...

The recent rush of enthusiasm for public investment in comparative effectiveness research (CER) in the US has focussed attention on these public investments. However, little attention has been given to how changing public investment in CER may affect private manufacturers’ incentives for CER,...