Search Results
Working Paper
Health care costs, wages, and aging
While economists generally agree that workers pay for their health insurance costs through reduced wages, there has been little thought devoted to the level at which these costs are passed on: Is each employee's wage reduced by the amount of his or her own health costs, by the average health costs of employees in the firm, or by some amount in between? This paper analyzes one dimension of the question of how firms pass health costs to workers. Using cross-city variation in health costs, I test whether older workers pay for their higher health costs in the form of lower wages. I find that in ...
Working Paper
Learning and the value of information: the case of health plan report cards
We estimate a Bayesian learning model in order to assess the value of health plan performance information and the extent to which the explicit provision of information about product quality alters consumer behavior. We take advantage of a natural experiment in which health plan performance information for HMOs was released to employees of a Fortune 50 company for the first time. Our empirical work indicates that the release of information had a small but statistically significant effect on health plan choices, causing 3.1% of employees to switch health plans. Although consumers were willing ...
Conference Paper
Health care services and the rural economy
Report
What do we really know about trends in outpatient medical expenditures for children, 1977-1987?
This analysis of outpatient medical expenditures for children identifies which children experience a relative decline in medical expenditures between 1977 and 1987. The paper also evaluates some standard methodologies used in medical demand estimation. Our semiparametic approach models expenditures simultaneously with the choice of insurance plan and the decision to incur any expenditures. Children in poor families and Hispanic children witness a decline in expenditures relative to other children. Children on Medicaid and black children experience stable expenditures over time. These results ...
Speech
Commencement address at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center
Remarks at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center commencement, Dallas, Texas, June 2, 2007 ; "...True success comes to those who best put their talents in context and who connect a substantial intellect to an equally developed emotional capacity. Those of us who lead cerebral lives must constantly strive to elevate our 'people skills' to a level equal to our intellectual skills."
Journal Article
Public health and the public agenda
This paper was presented as the distinguished address at the conference "Unequal incomes, unequal outcomes? Economic inequality and measures of well-being." The conference was held at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York on May 7, 1999. The author examines health issues, observing that infant mortality rates for African-Americans are twice as high as they are for white Americans; Chinese-Americans are four to five times more likely to suffer from liver cancer than other Americans; and Latinos and Native Americans develop diabetes at a rate twice and three times the U.S. average, ...
Journal Article
Unequal incomes, unequal outcomes? Economic inequality and measures of well-being: proceedings of a conference sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, May 7, 1999
These are the proceedings of a conference organized to focus on the evolution of more direct measures of the material well-being of Americans. Of particular concern was the impact of income inequality on trends in health, housing, and crime victimization. Conference participants also examined some of the changes in policymakers' responses to these trends, especially in the areas of education financing and local governance. Finally, the participants discussed efforts to evaluate the social consequences of policy reforms and offered some guidelines on the best direction for future research and ...
Newsletter
Check Up Before You Check Out
Retail clinics offer convenient, low-cost preventive health care and treatment for minor injury and illness. When a retail clinic opens, the rate of visits to the emergency room for these low-severity conditions declines for people who live in close proximity.
Journal Article
The other pharm crisis
The pharmacy industry faces a multitude of challenges, and rural areas confront the possibility of losing pharmacy services.