Many questions about technology growth and development in health care call for a broad-based characterization of technology availability. In this paper, we explore the possibility of producing aggregated estimates of technology availability by constructing an index of technology availability in...

During the last two decades, the treatment of infertility has improved dramatically. These treatments, however, are expensive and rarely covered by insurance, leading many states to adopt regulations mandating that health insurers cover them. In this paper, we explore the effects of benefit...

June 1998 (Revised) <p> Concerns about the health of poor children and mothers produced major changes in the Medicaid public insurance program during the last decade, including expansions in program eligibility and increases in fees paid to physicians who care for covered patients. We examine...</p>

Many discussions of managed care, as well as policy making and research efforts, treat managed care with a broad brush, forcing a wide variety of organizations into a single framework that facilitates discussion but abstracts from a number of key issues. Although it may be instructive to conduct...

Increases in the activity of managed care organizations may have "spillover effects," influencing the entire health care delivery system's performance, so that care for both managed-care and non–managed-care patients is affected. Some proposals for Medicare reform have incorporated spillover...

We examine the extent to which hospital technologies are associated with growth in U.S. hospital costs. We create an index capturing the availability of a range of technologies in 2214 hospitals and track over the period 1996-2007, along with financial information from Medicare Cost Reports. We...

Despite a vast literature on the determinants of prescription opioid use, the role of health insurance plans has received little attention. We study how the form of Medicare beneficiaries' drug coverage affects the volume of opioids they consume. We find that enrollment in Medicare Advantage,...

During the last two decades, the treatment of infertility has improved dramatically. These treatments, however, are expensive and rarely covered by insurance, leading many states to adopt regulations mandating that health insurers cover them. In this paper, we explore the effects of benefit...