In promoting health care reform in 2009, President Obama stated, “when it comes to health care spending, we are on an unsustainable course that threatens the financial stability of families, businesses and government itself.” We are still on that “unsustainable course” thirteen years...

Moral hazard and provider-induced demand may contribute to overutilization of scarce health care resources. The U.S. health care system includes several compensatory cost-containment mechanisms, but their effects depend on how patients and providers respond. We investigate hospice programs'...

Medicare pricing is known to indirectly influence provider prices and care provision for non-Medicare patients; however, Medicare's regulatory externalities are less well-understood. We study such implications by examining how physicians' outpatient surgery setting preferences respond to the...

Despite promises that Medicare would not interfere with patients' ability to choose their physician and to purchase additional health coverage on the open market, over the decades Medicare rules and regulations have gradually eroded senior citizens' ability to control their healthcare choices....

The paper explores the role that Social Health Insurance (SHI), as an organisational mechanism for raising and pooling additional funds, can play in financing health services in India. It formulates an SHI concept and its aims for India and examines case studies of different countries that have...

Long waiting lines are a common feature and a major concern in many public health care delivery systems. The waiting lines are often characterized as inefficient, because they are a burden to patients without generating any gains for providers. There is an ongoing debate in Germany regarding the...

The difficulties that Medicaid beneficiaries face accessing medical care are often attributed to the program's low reimbursement rates relative to other payers. There is little evidence, however, as to the actual effects of Medicaid doctor payment rates on access and health outcomes for...

Primary care physicians have a central, coordination role in medicine, yet little is known about their impacts on healthcare utilization. I study the short-run and long-run effects of switching to different primary care physicians on utilization in terms of spending among Medicare patients over...

This paper examines, theoretically and empirically, how changes in the demand for health insurance and medical services in the non-Medicare population -- coverage eligibility changes for parents and the firm size composition of employment – spill over and affect health insurance coverage and...

Privatization has been shown to increase growth and profitability of public firms. However, effects on consumers are understudied. We study potential trade-offs in the US hospital sector where public control declined by 42% over 1983-2019. Private operators may improve hospitals' financial...