Like other countries seeking a progressive path to universalism, Peru has attempted to reduce inequalities in access to healthcare by granting the poor entitlement to tax-financed basic care without charge. We identify the impact of this policy by comparing the target populationś change in...

This article investigates the impact on the U.S. economy of making health care more affordable. We compare health care cost reductions with the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) using a rich life cycle general equilibrium model with heterogeneous agents. We evaluate a wide range...

The United States has state of the art technology and world renowned expertise in medical treatment, yet in terms of healthcare it shows a dramatically poor performance in relation to the other industrialized countries. This situation is surprising, since one would expect that a free market...

In addressing problems with our health care payment system, one of the most contentious debates has been whether the United States should adopt a plan of universal health care. The debate intensifies over whether this country should adopt a single payer health care system, which one commentator...

When the Medicare Part D prescription drug benefit was implemented in 2006, six drug classes were designated “protected classes.” Because responsibility for obtaining favorable drug prices depends on private insurers’ abilities to negotiate with pharmaceutical manufacturers using the...

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...

In the first two quarters of 2013 the Georgian government introduced and fully implemented a universal health care (UHC) plan covering all those not-yet publicly or privately insured. We estimate the effect of the introduction of the universal healthcare plan on the level of out-of-pocket (OOP)...

Most Social Security Disability Insurance (DI) beneficiaries must complete a 5-month waiting period before they become entitled to DI cash benefits and an additional 24-month waiting period before Medicare benefits begin. The Accelerated Benefits (AB) demonstration is a randomized experiment...

We implement an empirical test for selection into health insurance using changes in coverage induced by the introduction of mandated health insurance in Massachusetts. Our test examines changes in the cost of the newly insured relative to those who were insured prior to the reform. We find that...

The Affordable Care Act requires insurers to offer cost sharing reductions (CSRs) to low-income consumers on the Marketplaces. We link 2013-2015 All-Payer Claims Data to 2004-2013 administrative hospital discharge data from Utah and exploit policy-driven differences in the actuarial value of CSR...