Market Structure of the Health Insurance Industry
Author: D. Andrew Austin
Publisher: DIANE Publishing
Published: 2010-04
Total Pages: 65
ISBN-13: 1437926460
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Competition in Health Insurance
Author: American Medical Association
Publisher:
Published: 2013
Total Pages: 60
ISBN-13: 9781603599443
DOWNLOAD EBOOKHandbook of Health Economics
Author: Mark V. Pauly
Publisher: Elsevier
Published: 2012-01-05
Total Pages: 1149
ISBN-13: 0444535926
DOWNLOAD EBOOK"As a relatively new subdiscipline of economics, health economics has made many contributions to areas of the main discipline, such as insurance economics. This volume provides a survey of the burgeoning literature on the subject of health economics." {source : site de l'éditeur].
Voluntary Health Insurance in Europe: Country Experience
Author: Sagan A.
Publisher: World Health Organization
Published: 2016-07-20
Total Pages: 163
ISBN-13: 9289050373
DOWNLOAD EBOOKNo two markets for voluntary health insurance (VHI) are identical. All differ in some way because they are heavily shaped by the nature and performance of publicly financed health systems and by the contexts in which they have evolved. This volume contains short structured profiles of markets for VHI in 34 countries in Europe. These are drawn from European Union member states plus Armenia Iceland Georgia Norway the Russian Federation Switzerland and Ukraine. The book is aimed at policy-makers and researchers interested in knowing more about how VHI works in practice in a wide range of contexts. Each profile written by one or more local experts identifies gaps in publicly-financed health coverage describes the role VHI plays outlines the way in which the market for VHI operates summarises public policy towards VHI including major developments over time and highlights national debates and challenges. The book is part of a study on VHI in Europe prepared jointly by the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies and the WHO Regional Office for Europe. A companion volume provides an analytical overview of VHI markets across the 34 countries.
Care Without Coverage
Author: Institute of Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
Published: 2002-06-20
Total Pages: 213
ISBN-13: 0309083435
DOWNLOAD EBOOKMany Americans believe that people who lack health insurance somehow get the care they really need. Care Without Coverage examines the real consequences for adults who lack health insurance. The study presents findings in the areas of prevention and screening, cancer, chronic illness, hospital-based care, and general health status. The committee looked at the consequences of being uninsured for people suffering from cancer, diabetes, HIV infection and AIDS, heart and kidney disease, mental illness, traumatic injuries, and heart attacks. It focused on the roughly 30 million-one in seven-working-age Americans without health insurance. This group does not include the population over 65 that is covered by Medicare or the nearly 10 million children who are uninsured in this country. The main findings of the report are that working-age Americans without health insurance are more likely to receive too little medical care and receive it too late; be sicker and die sooner; and receive poorer care when they are in the hospital, even for acute situations like a motor vehicle crash.
Moral Hazard in Health Insurance
Author: Amy Finkelstein
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2014-12-02
Total Pages: 161
ISBN-13: 0231538685
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAddressing the challenge of covering heath care expenses—while minimizing economic risks. Moral hazard—the tendency to change behavior when the cost of that behavior will be borne by others—is a particularly tricky question when considering health care. Kenneth J. Arrow’s seminal 1963 paper on this topic (included in this volume) was one of the first to explore the implication of moral hazard for health care, and Amy Finkelstein—recognized as one of the world’s foremost experts on the topic—here examines this issue in the context of contemporary American health care policy. Drawing on research from both the original RAND Health Insurance Experiment and her own research, including a 2008 Health Insurance Experiment in Oregon, Finkelstein presents compelling evidence that health insurance does indeed affect medical spending and encourages policy solutions that acknowledge and account for this. The volume also features commentaries and insights from other renowned economists, including an introduction by Joseph P. Newhouse that provides context for the discussion, a commentary from Jonathan Gruber that considers provider-side moral hazard, and reflections from Joseph E. Stiglitz and Kenneth J. Arrow. “Reads like a fireside chat among a group of distinguished, articulate health economists.” —Choice
Making Medicines Affordable
Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
Published: 2018-03-01
Total Pages: 235
ISBN-13: 0309468086
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThanks to remarkable advances in modern health care attributable to science, engineering, and medicine, it is now possible to cure or manage illnesses that were long deemed untreatable. At the same time, however, the United States is facing the vexing challenge of a seemingly uncontrolled rise in the cost of health care. Total medical expenditures are rapidly approaching 20 percent of the gross domestic product and are crowding out other priorities of national importance. The use of increasingly expensive prescription drugs is a significant part of this problem, making the cost of biopharmaceuticals a serious national concern with broad political implications. Especially with the highly visible and very large price increases for prescription drugs that have occurred in recent years, finding a way to make prescription medicinesâ€"and health care at largeâ€"more affordable for everyone has become a socioeconomic imperative. Affordability is a complex function of factors, including not just the prices of the drugs themselves, but also the details of an individual's insurance coverage and the number of medical conditions that an individual or family confronts. Therefore, any solution to the affordability issue will require considering all of these factors together. The current high and increasing costs of prescription drugsâ€"coupled with the broader trends in overall health care costsâ€"is unsustainable to society as a whole. Making Medicines Affordable examines patient access to affordable and effective therapies, with emphasis on drug pricing, inflation in the cost of drugs, and insurance design. This report explores structural and policy factors influencing drug pricing, drug access programs, the emerging role of comparative effectiveness assessments in payment policies, changing finances of medical practice with regard to drug costs and reimbursement, and measures to prevent drug shortages and foster continued innovation in drug development. It makes recommendations for policy actions that could address drug price trends, improve patient access to affordable and effective treatments, and encourage innovations that address significant needs in health care.
Employment and Health Benefits
Author: Institute of Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
Published: 1993-02-01
Total Pages: 381
ISBN-13: 0309048273
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe United States is unique among economically advanced nations in its reliance on employers to provide health benefits voluntarily for workers and their families. Although it is well known that this system fails to reach millions of these individuals as well as others who have no connection to the work place, the system has other weaknesses. It also has many advantages. Because most proposals for health care reform assume some continued role for employers, this book makes an important contribution by describing the strength and limitations of the current system of employment-based health benefits. It provides the data and analysis needed to understand the historical, social, and economic dynamics that have shaped present-day arrangements and outlines what might be done to overcome some of the access, value, and equity problems associated with current employer, insurer, and government policies and practices. Health insurance terminology is often perplexing, and this volume defines essential concepts clearly and carefully. Using an array of primary sources, it provides a store of information on who is covered for what services at what costs, on how programs vary by employer size and industry, and on what governments doâ€"and do not doâ€"to oversee employment-based health programs. A case study adapted from real organizations' experiences illustrates some of the practical challenges in designing, managing, and revising benefit programs. The sometimes unintended and unwanted consequences of employer practices for workers and health care providers are explored. Understanding the concepts of risk, biased risk selection, and risk segmentation is fundamental to sound health care reform. This volume thoroughly examines these key concepts and how they complicate efforts to achieve efficiency and equity in health coverage and health care. With health care reform at the forefront of public attention, this volume will be important to policymakers and regulators, employee benefit managers and other executives, trade associations, and decisionmakers in the health insurance industry, as well as analysts, researchers, and students of health policy.
Policy and Choice
Author: William J. Congdon
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
Published: 2011-04-01
Total Pages: 260
ISBN-13: 0815705018
DOWNLOAD EBOOKTraditional public finance provides a powerful framework for policy analysis, but it relies on a model of human behavior that the new science of behavioral economics increasingly calls into question. In Policy and Choice economists William Congdon, Jeffrey Kling, and Sendhil Mullainathan argue that public finance not only can incorporate many lessons of behavioral economics but also can serve as a solid foundation from which to apply insights from psychology to questions of economic policy. The authors revisit the core questions of public finance, armed with a richer perspective on human behavior. They do not merely apply findings from psychology to specific economic problems; instead, they explore how psychological factors actually reshape core concepts in public finance such as moral hazard, deadweight loss, and incentives. Part one sets the stage for integrating behavioral economics into public finance by interpreting the evidence from psychology and developing a framework for applying it to questions in public finance. In part two, the authors apply that framework to specific topics in public finance, including social insurance, externalities and public goods, income support and redistribution, and taxation. In doing so, the authors build a unified analytical approach that encompasses both traditional policy levers, such as taxes and subsidies, and more psychologically informed instruments. The net result of this innovative approach is a fully behavioral public finance, an integration of psychology and the economics of the public sector that is explicit, systematic, rigorous, and realistic.
Competition in the Health Care Sector
Author: Warren Greenberg
Publisher: Beard Books
Published: 2002
Total Pages: 428
ISBN-13: 9781587981302
DOWNLOAD EBOOKSource of the debate on how much competition and regulation are necessary in the health care industry. This is a reprint of proceedings from a 1977 conference.
