We examine the impact that medical research published in peer-reviewed journals has on the practice of medicine. We exploit the release of a recent New England Journal of Medicine article which demonstrated that the risks of attempting a vaginal birth after having a previous C-section birth...

Medicare’s prescription drug benefit (Part D) has been its largest expansion of benefits since 1965. Since the implementation of Part D, many regulatory proposals have been advanced in order to improve this government-created market. Among the most debated are proposals to limit the number of...

There is tremendous interest in understanding the effects of welfare reform enacted by the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. Our interest lies in one possible consequence of welfare reform: the loss of health insurance.This paper advances the literature by...

In March 2001, the longest economic expansion in U.S. history ended, and an economic recession began. This paper seeks to provide a better understanding of the historical relationship between macroeconomic variables and health insurance coverage.We use data from two nationally representative...

Using data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), we study the health insurance and labor market implications of the recent Affordable Care Act (ACA) provision that allows dependents to remain on parental policies until age 26. Our comparison of outcomes for young adults...

Even before the current economic downturn, rates of employer-sponsored insurance (ESI) declined substantially, falling six percentage points between 2000 and 2008 for nonelderly Americans. During a previously documented decline in ESI, from 1987 to 1996, the fall was found to be the result of a...

type="main" xml:id="ecin12083-abs-0001" A key criterion for evaluating policies to expand health insurance coverage is weighing the costs of such policies against the willingness of the public to pay for coverage expansions. We use new panel survey data from New York State to estimate residents'...

We examine how use of antidepressant medications is influenced by Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warnings about the increased risk of suicidality associated with pediatric antidepressant use. With individual-level data on antidepressant use from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, we...

This paper explores the effects of public health insurance expansions on hospitals’ decisions to adopt medical technology. Specifically, we test whether the expansion of Medicaid eligibility for pregnant women during the 1980s and 1990s affects hospitals’ decisions to adopt neonatal...