We study the design of provider incentives in the post-acute care setting – a high-stakes but under-studied segment of the healthcare system. We focus on long-term care hospitals (LTCHs) and the large (approximately $13,000) jump in Medicare payments they receive when a patient's stay reaches...

Health spending has risen rapidly in Japan. We find two-thirds of the spending increase over 1990–2011 resulted from ageing, and the rest from excess cost growth. The spending level will rise further: ageing alone will raise it by 3½ percentage points of GDP over 2010–30, and excess cost...