This chapter summarizes the many aspects of public policy for health care. I first consider government policy affecting individual behaviors. Government intervention to change individual actions such as smoking and drinking is frequently justified on externality grounds. External costs of...

This article examines issues potentially raised under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) by states' decisions whether and how to include disabled Medicaid recipients in the massive shift towards Medicaid managed care. Part II briefly examines the special issues that disabled Medicaid...

Leveraging the random assignment of over 50,000 Medicaid enrollees in New York, I present causal evidence that narrow networks are a blunt instrument for reducing health care spending. While narrower networks constrain spending, they do so by generating hassle costs that reduce quantity, with...

In this paper, we explore the effects of primary care physician (PCP) practice competition on five distinct quality metrics directly tied to screening, follow-up care, and prescribing behavior under Medicare Part B. Controlling for physician, practice, and area characteristics as well as zip...

The recent final rule on Medicaid managed care establishes the minimum medical loss ratio (MLR) requirement for Medicaid managed care and contains several provisions to strengthen delivery and payment reforms and improve efficiency and quality of care. Accordingly, this research examines the...

Private insurance firms participating in Medicare can offer up to three principal plan types: coordinated care plans (CCPs), prescription drug plans (PDPs), and private fee for service (PFFS) plans. Firms can make entry and marketing decisions separately across plan types and geographic regions....

I estimate the welfare, both gross and net, provided by the Medicare managed care program in 1999 through 2002. First, I estimate a model of demand for the benefits offered by managed care plans to Medicare beneficiaries. I then use the demand estimates to form estimates of welfare provided by...

Evaluating Accountable Care Organizations is difficult because there is a great deal of heterogeneity in terms of their reimbursement incentives and other programmatic features. We examine how variation in reimbursement incentives and administration among two Medicaid managed care plans impacts...

Publicly-funded health care is undergoing a paradigm shift as Medicaid converts from fee-for-service systems to managed care plans. This shift to capitated reimbursement affects the methods that women, including those with HIV, use to access primary health care and related specialty care. This...

This paper estimates the impact of the introduction of Medicaid managed care (MMC) on the formal Medicaid participation of children. We employ a quasi-experimental approach exploiting the location-specific timing of MMC implementation in Kentucky. Using data from the March Current Population...