Transferring the costs of expensive treatments

Costs Are Expensive!

We study the model-checking problem for WMTL, a costextension of the linear-time timed temporal logic MTL, that is interpreted over weighted timed automata. We draw a complete picture of the decidability for that problem: it is decidable only for the class of one-clock weighted timed automata with a restricted stopwatch cost, and any slight extension of this model leads to undecidability. We fi...

New expensive treatments for hepatitis C infection.

Expensive lifesaving treatments: allocating resources and maximizing access

Avisar et al. present an exemplary model for outreach aimed at ensuring that a maximum of patients eligible for expensive Hepatitis C (HPC) drugs receive treatment. We enlarge the picture to put their model in the political, economic and regulatory framework for financing and providing these drugs in Israel and a number of other countries. We then return to delivery system level and consider is...

Hidden overhead costs: is Canada's system really less expensive?

Prologue: Canada’s provincial health insurance scheme is a source of endless fascination to policymakers advocating health system reform. Whether one is an advocate or a or a detractor of Canada’s plan us a model for the United States, an important issue that engages the antagonists is how much it costs to operate compared with America’s pluralistic and mostly private health insurance approach....

Too expensive to meter: the influence of transaction costs in transportation and communication.

Technology appears to be making fine-scale charging (as in tolls on roads that depend on time of day or even on current and anticipated levels of congestion) increasingly feasible. Such charging also appears to be increasingly desirable, as traffic on roads continues to grow and costs and public opposition limit new construction. Similar incentives towards fine-scale charging also appear to be ...