We consider physicians with fixed capacity levels. If a physician's capacity exceeds demand, she may have an incentive to overtreat, i.e., she may provide unnecessary treatments to use up idle capacity. By contrast, with excess demand she may undertreat, i.e., she may not provide necessary...

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...

This paper reports experience over five years from a single large employer in the Midwestern United States that adopted a high-deductible health plan with a health savings account (HSA) for all employees. This study represents one of the longest observation periods reported with a...

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...

This paper reports use of health care services related to health care quality over five years among over 18,000 individuals from a single large employer in the Midwestern United States that adopted an HSA-eligible health plan for all employees. It represents one of the longest observation...

The body of research on how consumer-directed health plans (CDHPs) affect the use and costs of health care services -- while still relatively small -- is growing. In recent work, the Employee Benefit Research Institute has examined these relationships using panel data from a large employer that...

The creation of tax-free health savings accounts presents a new opportunity to reduce the distortions created by federal tax preferences for health-related expenditures, and ultimately help eliminate those distortions. This paper proposes changes to current law that would allow most workers to...

This paper examines accounts that can be used to pay for health care services on a tax-favored basis. Starting with health savings accounts (HSAs), the function of these accounts is described, followed by a discussion of issues related to the accounts, whether expectations for the accounts will...

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)...