Provider cost-control incentives have become an important part of the health insurance landscape in the United States. These incentives are strongest in capitated managed care organizations, especially HMOs, because such organizations are paid a fixed amount regardless of the spending they...

Very few industries are as profoundly influenced by regulation as the pharmaceutical industry. All aspects of the life-cycle of new drugs are regulated, from patent application, to marketing approval, commercial exploitation, patent expiration and competition with generics. The nature of demand...

Despite promises that Medicare would not interfere with patients' ability to choose their physician and to purchase additional health coverage on the open market, over the decades Medicare rules and regulations have gradually eroded senior citizens' ability to control their healthcare choices....

Fair competition law and public health law talk past each other when discussing pharmaceutical pricing and distribution. The former cannot agree on the relevant definition of consumer welfare. The latter does not fully comprehend the highly complex but inherently collective nature of...

In the Affordable Care Act (ACA), Congress assumed that the private insurance sector will continue to underwrite health risks for most of the non-elderly population. But nothing requires private insurers to continue to do so. To the contrary, the burdensome nature of the ACA's provisions is...

In this paper we analyze the impact of using a risk-adjusted comprehensive payment model, in support of In this paper we analyze the impact on total medical costs of using a risk-adjusted comprehensive payment model, to support a patient-centered medial home. We compare 2008-2010 insurance...

This paper empirically assesses the relative role of health plan prices, service quality and optional benefits in the decision to choose a health plan. We link representative German SOEP panel data from 2007 to 2010 to (i) health plan service quality indicators, (ii) measures of voluntary...

This paper empirically assesses the relative role of health plan prices, service quality and optional benefits in the decision to choose a health plan. We link representative German SOEP panel data from 2007 to 2010 to (i) health plan service quality indicators, (ii) measures of voluntary...

Healthcare payers try to reduce costs by promoting the use of cheaper generic drugs. We show strong interrelations in drug prescriptions between the inpatient and outpatient sectors by using a large administrative dataset from Austria. Patients with prior hospital visits have a significantly...

We explore the effects that optimism bias has on the demand for insurance. Our theory is based on a simple binomial model of the demand for insurance in which consumers make optimistically biased assessments concerning the likelihood of future outcomes. From this model, we derive an insurance...