Paying taxes is a cost of doing business. The looters (or public servants, depending on your perspective) must be paid and tax proceeds must be distributed to various groups and individuals, both worthy and unworthy. But tax expense includes more than just the amount of taxes that must be paid....

Our study examines the impact of the capital prospective payment system (CPPS), implemented by Medicare in 1991, on capital expenditures and cost-effective behavior of non-proprietary hospitals. As noted in the paper, we use audited financial statement data for a large national sample of...

In 1991 the Health Care Financing Agency (HCFA) changed the reimbursement system for hospital capital costs from a costs-paid basis to one with a prospective basis, as part of the ongoing battle to control health care costs. This followed the 1984 change for patient costs from a Fee-For-Service...

Hospitals face an environment of declining real per-patient reimbursement from Medicare. Understanding the provider response to changing Medicare prices is critical for balancing the complex incentives of hospitals and patients with the fiscal and social objectives of the public insurance...

Moral hazard and provider-induced demand may contribute to overutilization of scarce health care resources. The U.S. health care system includes several compensatory cost-containment mechanisms, but their effects depend on how patients and providers respond. We investigate hospice programs'...

This paper seeks to understand the impact of the Medicare Rural Hospital Flexi- bility (Flex) Program on rural resident hospital choice and welfare. The Flex program created a new class of hospital, the Critical Access Hospital (CAH), which receives more generous reimbursement in return for...

In the first decade of postcommunist transition, multiple growth regressions showed that the more radical and comprehensive market economic reform was, the earlier a country returned to economic growth and the more vigorous its growth, and that Central Europe took the lead. Since 2000, however,...

During the transition process, many existing social sector institutions and policies were significantly eroded and their underlying character changed. As a result, they often do not redistribute to the poorest, nor generally serve the role of facilitating economic change. Social sector reforms...