Like most branches of tort law, medical malpractice is largely premised on the notions that injuries arise from individual carelessness or lack of expertise, that culpable actors can be readily identified, and that their negligence can be deterred by setting damages sufficiently high to induce...

Tort litigation is frequently criticized for producing outcomes that do not match merit. We examined 1,452 closed malpractice claims from five insurers to obtain objective clinical judgments of their underlying merit. We then analyzed predictors of discordant outcomes-payment of apparently...

This study models the relationship between Medicare beneficiary decisions to join Medicare HMOs and subsequent health services utilization. The relationship between health plan choice and utilization is thought to be endogenous because of favorable selection into HMOs. Previous studies found...

Disenchantment with the tort system and negligence standard in the United States is fueling interest in alternate compensation systems for medical injury. One possibility is experimentation with administrative "health courts," through which specialized adjudicators would utilize neutral experts...

The law is now firmly established as a powerful instrument of public health. Some of the most important public health victories in the United States in the past century - declining lead exposure, reduced rates of smoking, improvements in workplace and motor vehicle safety, and increased...

Objective: To identify associations between market factors, especially relative reimbursement rates, and the probability of surgery and cost per episode for three medical conditions (cataract, benign prostatic neoplasm, and knee degeneration) with multiple treatment options. Methods: We use 2004...