Contracting between private health plans and hospitals has been described as “chaos behind a veil of secrecy.” Contract types — e.g. discounted charges versus per diems — profoundly influence providers' incentives and health plan spending, but remain largely hidden. We develop a novel...

U.S. state and local governments are increasingly restricting smoking in public places. This paper analyzes nationally representative databases, including the Nationwide Inpatient Sample, to compare short-term changes in mortality and hospitalization rates in smoking-restricted regions with...

U.S. state and local governments are increasingly restricting smoking in public places. This paper analyzes nationally representative databases, including the Nationwide Inpatient Sample, to compare short-term changes in mortality and hospitalization rates in smoking-restricted regions with...

Reference pricing, or capping payment for a particular medical service, has been gaining interest as a strategy to reduce health care costs. Using private insurance data as a measure, reference pricing applied to a narrow scope of inpatient services was shown to produce limited...